Criminal Minds: Missing Conversations
by Forestwytch
Summary: A series of one-shots of varying lengths in the Pip Harker universe, exploring her relationships with other team members. Mostly set during The Long Summer. Each chapter is named, and the main story will indicate where it fits in
1. JJ

_A/n: This is the first in a series of lengthy chapters that explore the background and development of Pip's relationships with different members of the team. Each is told from their point of view, in the same way the main story is told from Rossi's. Each is set as an optional extra to a main chapter._

* * *

 _JJ_

 _Should be read during or after Om Rau Part 2. Major spoilers for S9E14 200._

 _ **There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds - Laurell K. Hamilton**_

"I wasn't sure you'd agree to this," said JJ. She dropped the leather backpack onto the bed and settled its owner gently down next to it. She hadn't been sure at all. It was logical that Pip not be alone, and logical that JJ be the one to stay with her as the senior of the two female agents available. It wasn't like she could stay with Rossi; although after hearing some of language she'd aimed in Rossi's direction, JJ wasn't sure Pip would have wanted to stay with him even if it had been possible. Pip was logical, but she was also stubborn and almost rabidly independent. She hated needing help with _anything_ , and JJ was aware that she hadn't so much _agreed_ to swap with Seaver, as surrendered to it.

Pip just shrugged, the movement limited by the broken rib.

"It feels a bit like you've been avoiding me," JJ added, voicing the biggest problem she thought Pip would have had with her suggestion. She was down-playing it, because she knew for a _fact_ that Pip had been avoiding her. She just didn't know _why_. Her accusation was met by a flash of shame to go along with the pain already on Pip's face. JJ hadn't needed the confirmation, but the fact that it had been so easily visible meant she was really hurting.

"I've got some heavy painkillers in my bag left over from my torture session with the dentist last month," she commented. JJ clutched her jaw briefly in memory of the pain. She hated going to the dentist, and that trip had been costly because she'd left it so long. The pills had left her dopey and unable to see straight, but had certainly done the job. "You want a couple?" You weren't supposed to just hand them out like candy, but as she had them, it only seemed fair to share.

Pip's eyes narrowed, like she was looking for the mean joke in that honest offer. JJ took a step back. They'd become fairly good friends, in an odd sort of way, but things had been awkward since Pip's return from the dead; starting with that peculiar handshake the first morning she was back in the BAU. JJ still didn't know anything about why she'd vanished and how she'd made it back, and in a weird sort of way, it didn't really feel like the Pip she knew actually _was_ back.

Added to all that, Pip's flat, suspicious expression was really upsetting because she had no idea what she'd done to deserve any of it. "What?" JJ asked, folding her arms defensively. "What's with that look? You want them or not?"

Pip held her gaze for a few more seconds before dropping her eyes to her feet. "Thought I'd told you," she muttered.

Cryptic as ever. At least _some_ things never changed. JJ rolled her eyes and sat down carefully next to her, the tired old bed giving a creak in protest at having both of them sat on the same side. "Told me what?"

"I used to have a problem with pills." Pip shook her head. "I won't take anything stronger than ibuprofen."

"I've got some of that too," JJ said softly. She exhaled heavily to try and conceal her shock. The subject of drug addiction had _certainly_ never been raised between them, and considering what they'd been doing perhaps it really ought to have been. She stood and gave Pip's shoulder a gentle squeeze before turning to rummage in her bag, wondering what else she didn't know about her friend.

"Thanks," murmured Pip, when JJ handed her the small bottle.

"Recommended dose is two…" JJ trailed off as Pip shook out six and dry-swallowed them. "Never mind," she muttered ruefully.

Pip handed back the painkillers with an apologetic shrug. "Sorry, I thought you knew."

"No, I didn't. And I don't know why you've been avoiding me either." Having returned the bottle to its place in her bag, JJ sat back down on the bed, lounging back on her elbows to get more comfortable. "Was it something I did?"

"No!" exclaimed Pip, groaning at the deep breath she'd taken. "No, it wasn't," she repeated more carefully.

"Then _what?_ " asked JJ. She was starting to get really frustrated, it had never been so hard to talk to Pip before; at least once her sarcasm reflex had been satisfied. She'd not expected to have to _interrogate_ her to get some answers. "What am I supposed to think? You don't talk to me now unless you absolutely have to. We only had each other while we were in Afghanistan, I thought…" She stopped as Pip cringed involuntarily. "It isn't me at all, is it?" she said slowly, starting to understand.

Pip shook her head. "I should have been there," she whispered. "That ambush. It's my fault you…I should have been there."

JJ sat up and scooted forward to lay her hand on Pip's arm. "You _were_ there." Everyone had 20/20 hindsight - as soon as she had seen Pip alive and well back in the BAU, she knew who it had been protecting her in that firefight. At the time, with dust and bullets and shards of metal flying about in all directions, all she'd had been aware of was two men taking aim at her suddenly dropping dead. Somehow Pip had been there, just like she'd always promised to be if needed, and she'd saved her life. She _knew_ that, without needing to be told.

"I should have known about _him_."

"Askari pulled the wool neatly over all our eyes," disputed JJ. "He…"

"It was my fucking _job_ ," hissed Pip, "and I _failed_. I should have been lying in wait for that ambush, not chasing you across the landscape trying to keep up," insisted Pip, condemning her own actions and confirming JJ's assumption all in one breath. She shook off JJ's hand. "I should have stopped it. Stopped _him_. If I hadn't left in the first place, maybe I could have done."

JJ had no answer to that. Pip had gone off for days at a time on several occasions, she couldn't see why that last one had been any different. Yet she wanted to agree, simply because the miscarriage caused by the injuries she'd sustained hadn't been easy to bear alone. Without Pip at her back, she felt very exposed and very lonely as she tried to work through her grief. She hadn't even got as far as telling Will she was pregnant before she wasn't any more, and she had longed for someone to talk to. She and Pip had become quite close having been thrust together on their secretive mission, and that longing had only sharpened the existing heartache over the loss of the woman she'd only started to get to know.

Perhaps if Pip hadn't gone missing, things might have been different. Maybe. But her safety had never been Pip's objective, that had been something unofficial Pip had taken upon herself to do; there was nothing to say Pip could have done anything to stop the ambush. There was no guarantee things wouldn't have turned out just the same even if she _hadn't_ left on another of her secretive excursions.

"It's done," JJ said firmly. "Neither of us can change what happened." She stood, and started fiddling with her go-bag, needing something to occupy her hands.

"It's not something I would wish on my worst enemy," Pip choked out through rising tears, "and you were my friend!"

"You are _still_ my friend," retorted JJ sternly. "Once you get off the guilt train and start actually talking to me again."

"I lost a baby too," said Pip into the long silence that developed.

JJ paused. She'd been fussily folding and re-folding her clothes to play for time. She'd known it was on the other woman's mind, another parallel between them. There were many, for all that their lives couldn't have been more different. One didn't have to be a profiler to see it, and with her training fresh in her thoughts, it was as clear as day. She had purposely let the silence develop, a vacuum too great to ignore, because Pip seemed to be in a strangely talkative mood and she wanted to know what was going on.

Yet JJ hadn't really expected to work, because Pip was usually far too wily to be snared by a tactic so simple. She'd expected to have to dig a little. Or quite a lot, actually. For Pip to open up so easily about something so deeply personal was unusual, and more than a little troubling. It had taken months of chatting over their coffee in the desert before she had first shared snippets of personal information such as that, about what happened to her in Chicago and what she'd lost.

"I know, Pip, you don't have to…" JJ started.

"Yes, I do!" interrupted Pip. "I was supposed to protect you! I promised myself I would, and then I went off on a vengeance crusade and it nearly got you _killed_. You lost the baby! I know what that's like, how can I live with that?"

Vengeance? What on Earth? JJ spun to face her. "Pip…"

"JJ, listen to me," interrupted Pip, grabbing her arm and pulling her down to sit on the bed next to her. "I need you to understand."

JJ nodded uneasily, wondering what it was she was about to hear. She'd asked, _provoked_ the subject even, but was suddenly unsure if she really wanted to know after all. "Ok, I'm listening," she said warily.

"You know I was in the marines, right?"

JJ nodded again, a little more confidently. Everyone knew that, and she probably knew more than most about that part of Pip's life.

"It started during my first visit to that place." Pip sighed a little. "Feels like lifetimes ago. We were just passing through, hoping for some intel, but mostly just on the way home." She managed a twisted sort of smile. "We weren't looking for anything, not really. We were due back Stateside, finally rotating home and that was all we were focussed on. But I heard things. I knew the language, it was why I was there. I could hear people muttering furtively in corners, conversations in the shadows. They whispered together, wondering if they told the Americans, they would deal with the predator in their midst. But they were scared. Scared of talking openly about what was happening, scared of reprisal, scared of pretty much everything. They were such _nice_ people, but downtrodden into the dirt so badly, and it was heartbreaking. I couldn't stand it."

JJ grabbed Pip's hand, concerned about the look on her friend's face. She couldn't see the connection with their recent time there together, but as bad as it sounded already, it looked like it had a dark and bloody end.

Pip let out a watery sigh that hitched in the middle and set her jaw against the tears. She shot their linked hands a grateful glance, validating JJ's suspicions about how troubled she was. "They didn't know who it was, but _I_ did. I _knew_ what he was, as soon as I laid eyes on him. I met a man like him once, when I was a teenager. A child-raper with a taste for boys. I knew those eyes. It was a different face, but the eyes were the same, set on the visage of a man who used an area in thrall to fear and religious oppression to hide his crimes."

JJ shuddered. There was nothing so horrendous as the sexual violation of a child.

"I was young and green, so I offered my help," said Pip bitterly. "I told them I'd report it, but would quite honestly say I'd overheard, rather than them risking reprisal by speaking up. And I did. I told my CO, just like I said I would."

She sighed and shook her head. "I was informed rather briskly to leave it alone; that it wasn't our business and we shouldn't intrude on local law enforcement procedures. Ha!" Pip winced. "Ooh, shouldn't do that. Ow. Local justice, my ass!" she muttered, clutching her side. "Money could buy innocence and the religious police were terrifying everyone into subservient doormats. There was no justice there and we both knew he would get away with it. Stupid woman."

"Hamilton?" asked JJ, having put the timescale together. She squeezed Pip's hand to forestall the question she could see building on her face. "I was given a redacted copy of your file as background before I flew out to join you."

Pip grunted. "Should have known. Be grateful it was redacted, trust me, there's things you're better off not knowing." She nodded. "Yeah, it was Hamilton. Trouble was, according to our terms of engagement, _technically_ , we had no cause to intervene and she acted correctly. Doesn't mean it was _right_ ," she added with a hiss. "If the rules are wrong, you _break them!_ "

JJ sniggered a little. "You've never been good with orders, have you? How the hell did you end up a marine, join the CIA and then the Bureau?"

"I'm a masochist." Pip shot her a sideways glance and cracked a genuine smile when JJ laughed. "Actually, I had help; if you can call it that. However, I need at least half a bottle of wine down me before you're hearing that particular saga."

"I'll hold you to that," noted JJ. "Count on it. Back to Afghanistan. What happened?"

"Nothing," said Pip heavily. "We moved on. But I threatened him, before we left. I knew where I was going by that point, so I told him that one day, we would meet again for the last time. He just grinned at me." Pip hung her head. "When you went back to help find Emily, I went to find _him._ I couldn't resist going back there, I _had_ to go. I had to see if he was still alive, to see if he was still just as sick, just as _depraved_." She balled her hands into fists of frustrated anger. "I caught him red-handed with a group of boys," she growled, "none taller than my hip."

Pip let out her breath carefully in a long, slow hiss. "I lost my temper," she said more calmly. "I mean, _really_ lost it. I don't completely remember what I did. All I do know, is that it was a frenzy instead of a neat, quiet little ambush like I've been trained. By the time I could think again, we were in the main street surrounded by locals and there was blood everywhere. One of the boys had raised the alarm and the whole village had come out to see what all the fuss was about. Then the crowd _thanked me_ while he dripped down my arms, as if I hadn't left him there with them in the first place!"

JJ carefully wrapped her arm around her and let Pip bury her face in her shoulder. Well, that certainly put a different colour on things, didn't it? She thought Pip had left on another intelligence-gathering expedition. Instead, led by emotions she'd so thoroughly repressed in every other manner while she was out there, she had left to stop a criminal and utterly lost herself to bloodlust.

"Halfway there, me and the kid got a flat tyre," mumbled Pip into JJ's blouse. "We'd just got it changed out for the spare when someone opened fire on us. He died of sat phone wounds to the face and neck when the battery exploded. It must have been a tracer round, I guess, but I couldn't stop to find out. I had to leave him dead by the side of the road and run for it." She sighed. "I knew I wouldn't be able to call in, but I couldn't turn back. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I'd made it, when you returned, but by then I had suspicions that the problem with information flow was internal. All the time my handlers thought I was dead, nobody was watching me."

Another innocent death on her conscience as a result of her going rogue. Pip couldn't save the children the paedophile had assaulted in the intervening years, but she'd saved any future children suffering the same fate. Aside from her distress at losing control, Pip was suffering crippling guilt over the perceived inequality in that transaction: she'd saved many children, but felt that by doing so she'd been unable to save JJ's unborn child. Was there no end to the guilt Pip was carrying around with her? Were all intelligence assets so complicated? JJ was starting to get a headache trying to keep up with it all, and the tears pouring down her face weren't helping.

She had often wondered what had happened to Pip, but regardless of how recklessly emotional her reasons for leaving had been, her decision to remain hidden on her return was rational and even commendable. Despite how much it had hurt others like herself and Rossi to think that she was dead. By the time JJ had returned to Afghanistan, having spoken to Emily about how badly it was going, she had also suspected the leak was from the inside. In the same circumstances, she knew she might have made the same decision: to stay under, out of contact. JJ squeezed Pip's hand and reached over for a packet of tissues. "We're quite alike, aren't we?" she sniffled, breaking out in a small rueful smile.

She meant that she understood what Pip had done, but worn out as she was, more than just tired from their two days in the field, JJ realised she'd spoken the exact truth. They were _very_ alike, right down to their rebellious tendencies and a dislike of avocados. It was why they'd ended up friends in the first place.

Pip raised her head and one corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. "I've never been a narcissist but I knew there was a reason I liked you," she quipped. She managed a soggy sort of laugh, punctuated by another groan of pain. "I'm sick of getting shot at," she complained, wiping her eyes with the tissue JJ gave her.

"Aren't we all?" commented JJ drily. "I'm not going to judge you, Pip," she added more seriously, as they both dried themselves off. "You're my friend and you saved my life. We both made it, that's good enough for me," she said firmly. "Come on, I'll help you get your dirty shirt off so you can have a shower."

Pip seemed to be just as eager to let the subject drop. "Oh, yes please," she said, wincing as she stood up. "I'm not sure what was worse: the filth on the floor of that barn or the filth in that guy's mind."

The bruising on Pip's side was spectacular when it was revealed, even in the somewhat dingy light of the bathroom. "Now that's _gotta_ hurt. How are you even vertical still?" wondered JJ aloud as she helped Pip out of her shirt.

"Practice," replied Pip shortly. "I need you to undo the Twins for me too, I can't twist around to reach."

"I meant to ask about these," remarked JJ, as she did so. "I thought they were just for while we were in Afghanistan."

Pip shook her head, teeth gritted as JJ carefully peeled the straps away. "All…the time," she grunted. "I am…what I am."

"A spy with a conscience?" joked JJ. "Whatever next?" She drew in a sharp breath as she looked at the furrowed skin left behind. Where the round had hit the vest, it had smashed the bindings into Pip's side with incredible force. "You should have taken them off before you put a vest on," she said reprovingly, "they've dug in, even broken the skin a little. I thought you saw a doctor?" she added sternly.

"Don't like doctors," Pip murmured cagily, nibbling her lower lip.

JJ ramped up the volume on what Will termed her "pissed-off Momma-bear" expression, all the way to max.

"He gave me a local round the break, that wore off hours ago. I didn't show him the rest," Pip eventually admitted under the weight of that glare.

"You never change, do you?" snapped JJ. "Always want to deal with _everything_ yourself! It doesn't have to be that way."

"Habit," Pip mumbled defensively.

"Well, it's about time you broke it." JJ shook her head. "Be glad it's just the belts, can you imagine if you carried a knife that side?" She sighed heavily, trying to rein in her temper. "You're not going to be able to wear blades for a while."

Pip turned to get a better look in the tiny bathroom's grimy mirror and grimaced at the livid marks that framed the blooming bruise over her broken rib. "You're probably right," she conceded.

"About many things," said JJ pointedly, "we are alike, after all." She was pleased when Pip finally nodded in return, accepting the rebuke. "You want any help with the rest?"

Pip hesitated. "Actually, yeah," she admitted finally. "Probably with all of it."

That told JJ everything about just how much pain she was in. She nodded, and set about helping Pip get clean with as little fuss and embarrassment as possible.

* * *

"I don't hold you responsible," JJ said quietly as she helped Pip dress for bed. It was the same gentle tone she used with Henry when she was tucking him in at night. "So you shouldn't. There's enough blame around without you inventing some more and I think you've paid enough already," she reassured her.

She meant the meaning behind the .22 casing Pip had gifted her with, the elephant in the room they'd carefully ignored by unspoken agreement; but what she'd seen in the bathroom made that comment more sympathy than simple acknowledgement.

She'd been able to be clinical about it, helping Pip in the shower, but that hadn't stopped JJ wondering over the roadmap of scars that littered the body she was washing. She recognised a few, like the bullet wounds Pip had shown her before, the line of five across her body like a sash, and the knife wound on Pip's right thigh, dangerously close to the femoral artery. JJ had sewn that one up herself, a night that would certainly stay in memory for many years to come.

But there were plenty of others she'd never seen before, like the fresh gunshot furrow on her left shoulder. JJ couldn't count them all and still be subtle and compassionate about it, so she hadn't tried. She'd felt a kinship with her: some of Pip's battle scars showed on the outside, whereas all hers were internal. And yet, helping Pip satisfied some urge to repay the protection she'd provided.

"Did you clean your teeth?" JJ asked absently.

"Yes, mom," said Pip with a smirk. Her face fell. "Sorry, I didn't mean…"

JJ flapped a hand in dismissal. "I know," she said, smiling a little ruefully. "Will says the same thing. I can't believe I actually said that, but a mom is something you _become,_ I think. I woke up one morning and the sound of my mother came out of my own mouth. I can't even _swear_ properly anymore. Last time I said "fuck" Henry repeated it to everyone he met for about a month, so I've developed this kind of internal censorship to bleep out the expletives before I can even think them." She laughed. "You try swearing in adult company when the worst thing you can come up with is "oh bother"."

Pip managed a pained-looking snigger. "If I ever get to the point that I can't swear, you have my permission to shoot me."

"And yet you've been remarkably restrained since you got here," noted JJ. She cocked her head curiously. "You never wanted to come in the first place, did you? And not just because you're carrying a load of blame that doesn't belong to you."

"No," said Pip shortly. "I gave Dave a piece of my mind already."

"We heard," drawled JJ with a smirk. "Puppets and crayons? Really?"

Pip managed a smile, stifling the laugh with a careful deep breath. "Best I could come up with at short notice. I spent the flight out inventing creative ways to murder him that you wouldn't be able to trace back to me. I was so busy with that, I hadn't thought about what I was actually going to say to him."

"I can't say I entirely disagree with what he did," noted JJ. "We did need you."

"Me? Who is me? I'm just a shadow," whispered Pip.

"A shadow?" queried JJ, although she thought she might understand a little. Will didn't know what she'd been doing, who she'd become, the things she was responsible for. The _deaths_ she was responsible for.

"A ghost, moving through a world of real people. Nobody sees the same thing, I change to reflect what they need to see, hide in plain sight." Pip shook her head. "I hate what field work does to me, I always did. I have to shut away part of myself in order to function, and I can hear that part screaming whenever I have to hurt someone. I feel like I lose my humanity."

JJ narrowed her eyes. "Does Rossi know _why_ you hate field work?"

Pip averted her gaze. "Sort of," she muttered.

Which meant "no". JJ ran a hand through her hair in frustration. "Pip, you…" A knock at the door interrupted her. "Bet you any money, that's Rossi checking up on you," said JJ as she crossed the tiny room to the door. "You want me to let him in?"

Pip shook her head frantically and JJ sighed. They'd worked closer together in the BAU than the rest of the team realised, but before Afghanistan they had never really been friends. For the most part, their friendship had begun as one of circumstance. A familiar face in an ocean of dust and sand. Not that JJ had recognised her, at first.

Given Pip's role in what they'd been doing, both officially and unofficially, JJ had deferred to her to an extent. Pip was a little older, and had seen more than she had. She knew the area and had quite firmly told JJ that she planned to provide overwatch protection as often as she was able, in addition to her real reason for being there. In those circumstances, it was logical to look up to her and JJ had done so gladly.

But the Pip who'd been part of the BAU, that boisterous sarcastic spitfire, hadn't been the Pip in Afghanistan. That Pip was coldly calculating, ruthless, and came with a wide streak of almost casual violence that could be more than a little frightening. Several times, she'd arrived at one of their early morning check-ins battered and bruised or covered in someone else's blood. Or both. Two hours later a report would arrive of a trespasser killed in the night, or of a local cell member with his throat cut. Pip never mentioned it, and JJ never asked.

She would do exactly as she been instructed, regardless of the state Pip arrived in. She'd set up the secure satellite uplink she'd been entrusted with, and let Pip pass on anything she'd found. Relevant intel was channelled back to JJ and Cruz through Hastings. That was how the information flowed, filtered through the layers until they had something actionable by adding up every little morsel. The resources used to hunt Bin Laden were wide and far-ranging, and had included the uncharacteristically talkative woman huddled on the bed behind her.

They'd got talking, _properly_ talking, one morning over coffee and after that, those check-ins had turned into more than just an information download and confirmation of Pip's continued existence. It was two friends trying to survive the task ahead of them, against the odds and the hostile situation they'd found themselves in. JJ got into the habit of getting up early on days Pip was due so she could have a coffee ready for when she arrived, sneaking into camp while the guards were on last watch. Pip would crack a smile as she slipped in the door, pleased to see her. Although JJ had always privately wondered if the smile was more for the coffee than it was for her.

They would talk over their coffee. JJ would tell Pip news of home, Pip would offer pointed and sometimes witty insights into what she described. They would laugh, softly and quietly so as not to alert others that JJ wasn't alone. They bonded, partly because they were stuck in the desert with nobody else to talk to, but also because they had enough in common for it to be inevitable.

It was during one of those mornings that Pip had finally revealed the depth of her relationship, for lack of a better word at the time, with Rossi. She still dreamed of the broken look on Rossi's face when she'd told him the news of Pip's death, and those thoughts always led her mind back to the last time she'd spoken to Pip before she disappeared.

* * *

 _March 2011. Afghanistan._

JJ closed the door to her quarters, such as they were, shutting the rising dust storm outside. The wind whistled around the ill-fitting frame, bringing the dust with it. The door didn't keep the dust out, _nothing_ kept the damn dust out. The only time she felt clean anymore was in her own shower in the States. She'd only be back in country a matter of hours and she could already feel the environment had made its irritating way into her clothes, chafing at the seams and helped along by an abrasive wind that felt like a hug with a hot sandblaster. It had been a long uncomfortable flight and the only thought on her mind was a drink to wash the grit from her mouth and a few hours rack-time before getting back to work.

She'd barely taken a step inside when a strong hand gripped her throat firmly and something sharp dug into her ribs, perfectly placed to slip between them and pierce her heart. "Welcome back," said a familiar voice, inches from her ear.

JJ stuffed a hand in her mouth to stifle the scream that would otherwise have brought dozens of armed marines running to her rescue, and fought to escape. "You _scared_ me!" she hissed angrily, when Pip released her.

Pip nodded, flashing a cruel smile reminiscent of a rat trap. "Next time, you'll be more observant," she said pointedly. "Won't you?" She cocked her head reprovingly. "You've got sloppy in the time you were tucked up safely in the Pentagon."

JJ growled and swung her bag threateningly at her, a gesture the older woman evaded fluidly without actually seeming to move. JJ huffed with frustration and turned away to throw her bag down on her bunk. "Did you at least bring coffee, or just lurk about in the shadows waiting to attack me?" she snapped out through clenched teeth.

Pip was right, that was the most irritating thing about it. She specialised in the element of surprise, using stealth to achieve far more than her stature would otherwise allow. It was why she was so good at what she did. She drilled JJ relentlessly on her awareness, and JJ knew she shouldn't have been caught so off guard. It wasn't like it was the first time Pip had jumped out on her to make a point.

"Stole you a pot from the mess," replied Pip airily, seating herself on the only chair and casually hoisting her boots to rest on JJ's desk. "Help yourself. I'll wait."

Heart still pounding with fright and fury, JJ grabbed her mug in a grip so hard her knuckles went white; fighting desperately against the adrenaline-fuelled impulse to hurl it at her surprise visitor. Sometimes she wondered how they'd become friends, because Pip drove her absolutely crazy. She shut her eyes and hung her head, taking slow deep breaths to force herself to calm down.

There was no point being angry at Pip because it would only bounce straight back off and be ignored. It was like she had armour or something, and it made ranting at her incredibly unsatisfying. With no reaction, it just felt like you were a toddler having a tantrum. Pip would wait calmly until you felt stupid enough to stop and then simply continue on like nothing had happened. It had only taken two episodes before JJ realised it was simpler, not to mention less embarrassing, to just not give in to her temper in the first place.

She poured herself a coffee, uneasily wondering if she ought to lay off the caffeine if her suspicions were warranted. When she turned around, Pip was deep in concentration, cleaning dried blood from under her fingernails with a familiar long-bladed knife. At least she'd washed off the rest, whoever's it had been.

JJ had been Stateside for nearly a month, and she ran keen eyes over her friend, trying to see if Pip had any new injuries she wasn't going to tell her about. There didn't seem to be anything other than an odd mark on her face that she couldn't immediately identify, and she finally relaxed. She wouldn't be needing the emergency medical supplies she'd been hoarding. Not this time, anyway.

"You need me to unpack that?" she asked, gesturing vaguely towards the locked trunk containing the communications kit Pip would use to report home.

Pip rolled her eyes. "I sneak in here when you're not around and do it by myself if I need to. I don't need waiting on."

Somewhat relieved she wouldn't have to start work right away, JJ smiled faintly and sank down onto what passed for a mattress in a military camp. She took a swig of the coffee and for a moment struggled to swallow it. It seemed that Pip had been unable to steal a fresh pot, because "stewed" was a gross understatement. She couldn't be choosey, it was that or nothing, but it tasted like there might be a corroded spoon at the bottom. It did nothing to ease the dustiness of her throat, instead lining her mouth with what felt like a layer of coffee-flavoured tar. It certainly made the prospect cutting down or giving up caffeine a lot easier. JJ set the mug aside. "You're not supposed to be able to chew it," she complained.

"It's character-building," said Pip. "Puts hairs on your chest."

"Yes, that's what I'm worried about," muttered JJ, "it's barely one step away from chemical warfare."

Pip grunted, almost breaking out in a smile.

JJ reached into the top of her bag to see if there was a swallow left in the water bottle Will had given her before she left the house. Thankfully, there was. "So, what have I missed?" she asked, once she'd unglued her mouth. The water had been warm, but had at least cleared the thick residue from her tongue.

"Not a lot. Dust storms, shit food and no real progress. Strauss tries to throw her weight around every now and then, but they've all learned to ignore her like we do at home. It's not like she's here that much, just often enough to make some noise about how important the work she's doing is, before flying back to her feather bed in DC." Pip tutted dismissively. "I dream of how much fun it would be to creep up on her and point out that that she's not the one working hard."

"Strauss would have a seizure if she knew how she'd been manipulated," JJ disagreed. "It was bad enough that my transfer went over her head. She was so pleased to get rid of you, I don't think she'd take it well, knowing you're out here on double hazard pay. I dealt with some of the paperwork; I'm sure as she signed it, she was gleefully fantasising of a tiny basement office you'd be condemned to, a pauper never to see the light of day again."

Pip grinned wolfishly. _"Exactly."_

JJ tried to keep a straight face, she really did. She couldn't always tell when Pip was joking, but even the mental image of Strauss's probable indignation was funny. Strauss just wasn't likeable, and it was so tempting to laugh. JJ shook her head and banished the smile. "What else?"

Pip raised her eyes from her task, the knife pausing its trip around the circumference of her thumbnail. "I've seen some other things around here, as I creep about in the shadows unnoticed…and occasionally swapping Strauss's sugar sachets for salt just to keep myself amused." She smirked unrepentantly as JJ tutted with disapproval. "Matt's in love with you. He watches your ass like it's the best show in history."

JJ laughed. She couldn't help it. "You're kidding." Mateo Cruz was a nice guy, but not even _close_ to what she found attractive in a man. Pip shook her head and JJ's amusement faded. Ok, so she wasn't kidding. "How can you possibly know that?" she disputed. "Come on, it's not like he has many other women to look at."

"Like Strauss, you mean? I understand your scepticism." Pip huffed a mocking laugh, before shaking her head. "Trust me, I can always see it. It's…part of my skill set, you might say. You want a list of hard evidence to go along with the intuition?"

JJ nodded her agreement. She might as well play along; Pip was in one of her strange moods, so she was going to hear the list either way. No point in delaying the inevitable. Pip was like a storm: sometimes you just had to stand back and let nature it do its thing.

"He can't take his eyes off your face when you speak. If it was only lust, his gaze would be a little lower down." Pip patted her own chest, flattened under a binder and camouflaged with a baggy smock. With her curves and womanly assets hidden, tightly braided hair tucked up underneath a taqiyah and her unremarkable battle-worn face, Pip could pass for male in poor light; until she was close enough for her features to be clear. Of course, by that time she was in striking range and if you were a threat, you were probably already dead and just didn't know it yet.

"That's not…" JJ started to protest.

Pip shook her head and shushed her with an imperious flap of the hand. "He mopes about like a kicked dog every time you go home, and he flinches a little bit every time Will's name is mentioned. You should have seen the look on his face when you stepped off the transport plane. Like all his Christmases had come at once." She grinned humourlessly. "Could be worse, could be Askari. At least Hastings is too in love with himself to notice anyone else."

Hastings was a bit of a dick, but JJ had met nicer things under damp stones than Askari. She groaned. Pip was out there with her because she specialised in intelligence gathering, so she was probably right, as awkward as it might be. The _last_ thing she needed was Matt Cruz in love with her, especially if the pregnancy hormones did the same thing as they'd done last time. Nine months of being perpetually horny hadn't been exactly fun, no matter what that might sound like. "You were at the airstrip?" she asked, trying to shove thoughts of both Cruz and her possible condition out of her mind.

Pip rolled her eyes again. "Of course I was. Actually, I had a nice couple of hours safe snooze in a container full of netting while I waited for you to land." The knife gestured to the overlapping cross-hatch markings on her face. "Hence the interesting sunburn."

"I've got some aftersun in my bag somewhere," offered JJ, "you want me to dig it out?"

Pip shrugged, about the closest to "yes please" JJ was going to get. She started rummaging through her bag, stilling briefly as her fingers brushed across the cardboard box of the home pregnancy test she'd bought.

"Here," she said, thrusting the small bottle into Pip's hand. "It says all skin types, but you might want to test a small… never mind," she finished resignedly, as Pip flipped open the lid and poured a careless dollop directly onto her cheek. She tossed the bottle negligently back in JJ's direction.

JJ caught it easily and sat fidgeting with it, turning it over and over in her hands as Pip smeared the aftersun around. "You didn't have to lay in uncertain cover just to watch me arrive, surely?"

Pip glared at her. Even with a tic-tac-toe grid on her face, it was still intimidating. "You think I'm going to let you wander about in the open without me watching if I can _possibly_ help it? I told you, all the time I can, I will be."

JJ nodded, smiling a little. "I know." It was incredibly reassuring actually, knowing that Pip had her back. One person she _knew_ she could trust, no matter what. Trust…truth… Her mind's eye saw the unopened test in her bag. Truth, one way or the other. That uncertainty…she was late, but without the morning sickness, could it just be down to stress? It wasn't like the job was easy, but despite her initial reservations, she was thriving on the challenge. It would change _everything_ …

Pip swung her feet off the desk and leaned forward to peer intently at her face. "JJ, what's wrong?"

It had been a while since Pip had been anywhere near a shower, or even deodorant, but when she leant over all JJ could smell was the lotion on her face. It was a smell of home, a smell associated with Will and Henry and she could feel the sharp stab of homesickness like a spear through her womb. "I think I'm pregnant," she whispered, and buried her face in her hands. It felt good to tell someone, but the tears were hot and scalding, like a punishment.

There was a moment's silence. "Do I congratulate or commiserate?" asked Pip, smirking when JJ looked up at her angrily. "Congratulate then," she said drily. "Well done. Now stop fucking about and find out for sure."

JJ wiped her eyes, the tears vanishing as quickly as they arrived. If that wasn't a definitive sign she was pregnant, she didn't know what was. Pip's brusque unemotional response was familiar, expected and yet somehow comforting. She didn't waste words and could be quite harsh when she wanted to be, but JJ always knew her sometimes brutal manner was meant in the right way.

"I've got a test in my bag," she admitted. "I just haven't had the courage to find out for definite." JJ retrieved the box from her bag and then hesitated. It was what she wanted, but it was such damned _inconvenient_ timing.

"I'll stay with you," Pip informed her, exactly as JJ had hoped but not quite dared ask for.

She headed out into the swirling dust towards the sanitation hut to perform the required urinary gymnastics. Honestly, why did they make it so blasted _difficult_? It wasn't like it would have been easy even if she had a bit more room to manoeuvre. Good exercise for her pelvic floor muscles anyway. Feeling rather pleased with herself for not peeing all over her hand, JJ slipped back into her quarters and managed to dodge Pip when she tried to wrap an arm around her neck.

"Better," said Pip with a satisfied nod, and JJ felt like she'd just won a medal.

There were a few more tears as the two lines developed on the stick, although they were happier ones than before. They were accompanied by a rare hug from Pip in celebration. After trying for about a year, Henry was going to have a sibling and JJ found herself more pleased than she thought she'd be.

"Why were you hiding in my rack?" she asked, having hidden the incriminating test out of sight at the bottom of her bag. "Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased to see you, but if you don't need to use the uplink, then what _do_ you need? I know better than to think you're simply checking up on me."

There was a flash of hurt on Pip's face, quickly concealed under her usual professional mask, and JJ backtracked. "Pip, I didn't mean…"

Pip waved her knife dismissively and resumed the task of cleaning her nails, as if the brief hint of emotion had never been there. "Two things. I'm taking another trip, next time you go home. Two days there, two days back, probably two or three days on target. I'll use the automated check-in like usual, which reminds me, I'm going to swipe a sat phone this evening, mine came to a rather ignominious end yesterday. One of those armour-plated spiders tried to bunk down with me again and I twatted it with the first rock that came to hand." She shrugged. "Fucking thing was perched on my phone, it's like it knew I'd kill that too."

Pip rolled her eyes as JJ coughed to suppress the laugh. "Your sympathy with my arachnophobia is noted and appreciated," she said dryly. "Anyway, I need you to get me some full-cover female clothing in the local style because all mine is ripped to shit and covered in spider guts and fuck-knows-what else, and some papers giving me and my son permission to travel."

JJ stilled, the mirth evaporating in an instant. "Your son? Pip, what…"

"Less you know the better," interrupted Pip shortly. "On behalf of my country, I'm going to ingratiate myself with a group of nice trusting people, use them and betray them. I've found a young lad willing to take my money, and he's going to be my legally required travelling companion in case we get stopped on the road." The fixed, set expression worried JJ no end, because as plausible and awful as all that sounded, she didn't think Pip was telling her the truth.

Pip stood up, the knife vanishing under her clothing apparently without her moving a muscle. It was a magic trick JJ had seen before, yet she still had no idea how it was achieved. She knew Pip carried at least two knives secreted somewhere about her person, and had gifted JJ with a small boot knife on her arrival in theatre so it was reasonable to assume she had one of those as well.

"Second thing," started Pip, turning so JJ couldn't see her face.

"That was two things already," objected JJ teasingly, glad when Pip spun back to face her. Even the best profiler in the world couldn't do much with only a rigid set of shoulders to work with, and she wasn't exactly a profiler. "Three if I get you the sat phone before you rouse camp by stealing one." The dust got them, too. Every week or so one would keel over, clogged to the gills with grit. It would be easy enough to fake…

Pip examined her thoughtful expression. "Ok, third, or possibly fourth thing, depending on the success of the sneaky plan I can see you're concocting." She laughed a little ruefully. "I've been a bad influence on you. Just keep it simple." She turned away again. "I, um, I need a favour. A big one, of a…" She cleared her throat, looking oddly nervous even in profile, "…a more personal nature."

"Of course," JJ agreed instantly. Pip's slightly mocking glance rescinded her hard-won approval for the side-step earlier. Pip never agreed to anything without knowing what she was getting in for, and held JJ to the same standard. "What?" she objected. "I'm going to do it anyway, you know that as well as I do." JJ grinned cheekily. "You're a handy person to be able to call in a favour with."

Pip nodded but didn't smile, which set off more alarms in JJ's mind. "I need you to… I need you to promise to tell, ah, someone, if…" Pip shrugged. "Well, y'know."

JJ blinked. That certainly hadn't been any of the likely possibilities she'd come up with. Pip had no family, which meant... "You've got a…a partner?" She stumbled over how to phrase it, what word to use. She didn't know her well enough to just assume it was a _boy_ friend, and Pip was already skittish enough about telling her without inadvertently mis-gendering her romantic other. "I thought you said you weren't seeing anyone?" she asked cautiously.

Pip grimaced. "I…we're…it's complicated," she finished lamely, starting to pace up and down. "He's…we're friends and as I left to come out here, we realised it was more." She shook her head. "I pushed him away and I wish I hadn't," she blurted. "If something happens to me, he needs to know. I love him JJ, and I never told him."

JJ's heart went out to the grubby woman prowling the tiny space like a caged tiger. She knew what it was like to be thousands of miles away from the man she loved, but at least she could go home and see him regularly. She caught Pip's arm as she passed. "Of course I'll tell him. How much does he know about..." she gestured to their cramped, dusty surroundings, "…this?"

"Next to nothing, other than my role in the DoD being a backstopped cover story." Pip snorted with bitter humour. "I'm sure that's driving him batshit with frustration. He doesn't know about you or anything about what either of us is doing here."

In other words, only a tiny bit more than Will knew. Will didn't know where she was when she wasn't in DC. "Not that I think you're going anywhere anytime soon, but are you going to tell me the name of this mystery man?" quizzed JJ, oddly pleased to see the faint blush rising on Pip's usually emotionless face. "It's a little hard to deliver a message with no recipient."

Pip muttered something in reply that JJ couldn't immediately make sense of. "Who?" she asked again, sure she'd mis-heard.

"Dave," repeated Pip more clearly, folding her arms defensively.

Dave. Dave? How many Daves did she know? JJ wracked her brains trying to think of someone they both knew, other than the first person that had immediately sprung to mind. There was no one. "Dave as in _Rossi_?" she asked incredulously. "But you two fight like wet cats in a sack!"

"I think provided I get back, that energy is going to be re-directed," replied Pip with a smug smirk.

JJ laughed and Pip joined in. So carefree in that moment of friendly teasing, JJ was utterly unprepared for Pip to grab her and slam her hand over her mouth. "Quiet," she breathed in JJ's ear. "Someone's outside."

Suspicious at first that Pip had made it up in order to avoid explaining how she and Rossi had become…whatever they were, JJ strained her ears. At the very edge of hearing, the faint crackle of grit under the soles of someone's shoes filtered through from the other side of the door. JJ wasn't sure how Pip had heard it over their merriment, but she was glad she had; despite the lost opportunity to satisfy her curiosity. Pip's presence was a secret kept from all but a few selected individuals, and their moment of carelessness could have had far-reaching consequences for their mission's potential of success.

They listened, Pip having relaxed her hold but apparently unwilling to let go of JJ entirely. Footsteps moved slowly away, and they both let out a relieved breath.

"Too close," murmured Pip. "I've got to go before someone comes looking for you. I'm too old to be hiding under your bed."

"Not what you said last time," JJ said with a smirk.

Pip's face transformed with the most genuine smile JJ had seen since their transfer. It brightened her, making her seem younger, more like the woman she'd been before they were dragged out to the desert together. "No. I never thanked you for that, did I? Thank you, I really appreciated it."

JJ frowned, wondering where that sudden burst of gratitude had come from. She caught Pip's arm as she turned to leave. "Be careful," she pleaded, unsure why she was so concerned about Pip's safety.

Pip nodded, the familiar chilly expression already firmly back in place. She was gone before JJ could say anything else, leaving her with a stolen coffee pot and no idea of how to get it back to the mess without being noticed.

* * *

 _Summer 2011. Alabama_

JJ had fulfilled Pip's troubling request for clothes and papers and left them in their agreed dead drop location, along with a phone she'd managed to get hold of. She'd been rather proud of that bit of deception, especially because she'd been able to leave Pip a solar charging unit too. Hours later, she was flying back to the States because Emily had gone missing, wondering uneasily if Pip was going to use her absence to go off on her little excursion early.

She hadn't mentioned Pip to Rossi while they hunted for Emily, realising what a leap of faith Pip's admission had been. She had briefly showed a softer side than JJ had ever seen, and she'd dearly cherished that display of confidence. Right up until she was sat in the hospital while Emily was in surgery, and received the phone call that told her of the assumed loss of the fierce woman she'd known. That odd expression on Pip's face had flitted into memory and JJ had realised that even while sharing the secrets of her heart, the ruthless, logical Pip had known there was a possibility she wouldn't survive what was ahead and had made sure there was a way Rossi could be told.

Yet, it was neither of the capable women she recognised perched awkwardly on the end of the bed in her night clothes, like she was still expecting JJ to ask her to leave. Pip looked… _vulnerable_. As incongruous as that seemed, it meant their roles had been reversed for the evening. It was her turn to look after Pip, rather than the other way around.

Which first meant getting rid of Rossi. JJ opened the door. "Can I help you, Rossi? It's the middle of the night."

Rossi's gaze flicked up and over her shoulder as he tried to peer behind her. "I just wanted to see if she's ok."

"What do you think?" asked JJ, a little sharply. It had been a long day and it didn't seem to be over yet. "That asshole had a .45, she looks like she got kicked by a horse. She's just lucky the shot wasn't straight on."

"That's not what I meant," replied Rossi softly.

JJ heard Pip trying to blow her nose quietly, followed by a stifled yelp. She pulled the door closed a fraction, so Rossi couldn't see. She was tired and getting him to go away had just been made harder.

He couldn't see Pip, but he could hear her. The anguish on his face was heartbreaking as he realised Pip was certainly not ok. "JJ, if she's…I need to…Please?"

JJ shook her head, with a quick glance behind her to make sure Pip hadn't changed her mind. "Dave…" She gave him a gentle push backwards. "Let me handle this. Go back to bed."

"You can't hide from him forever, y'know," said JJ, once the door was firmly closed. "Or me." She helped Pip move to sit against the headboard, propping her upright as best she could with the limp and nearly flat pillows. "Are you going to be able sleep to sitting up?" she asked. "Looks really uncomfortable."

"I'm a soldier, I could sleep on a washing line in a hail storm," retorted Pip. "What about you?" she asked, gesturing awkwardly to the pillows behind her. "I can manage with just the one."

"I'm sure you could," replied JJ cheekily, "but then you'd complain all night and I wouldn't get any sleep either."

"Practical and to the point," noted Pip approvingly. "Alright, you win."

"It wasn't up for debate," teased JJ as she slipped under the somewhat threadbare covers on her side of the double bed. "Besides, last time you insisted on the floor." Although Pip hadn't so much insisted as simply landed there and been unable to move.

"That was _one_ time!" objected Pip, but she didn't look offended in the least. It was with some relief that JJ could see Pip's cheerfully indignant glare. "I would have been happy to share but it's not my fault you were given the smallest bunk in camp!"

The smallest bunk which Pip had slept beneath following an injury sustained fending off an overenthusiastic camel spider. Pip had been bitten twice, and managed to slice her leg open quite badly in the process of trying to get away from the creature. Or fight it off. JJ had never been exactly clear on that, because by the time Pip had turned up at her door drunk on adrenaline and delirious with blood loss, she hadn't been able string more than two coherent words together. Stubbornness had got her as far as JJ's quarters, but once there all she could do was beg for help and try not to hit the desk on her way down.

Stitching the cut on her leg had been the hardest part, but once JJ had managed that, there wasn't much she could do other than make sure Pip's wounds didn't get infected and offer a semi-secure place under her bed to sleep. And sleep Pip did. For nearly three days she did little else, with occasional furtive visits to the sanitation hut. JJ started stockpiling proper medical supplies after that little incident, things she knew she might need, and several she hoped she would never have to.

Pip never turned to her for medical assistance, the run-in with the spider aside, but she would happily lift what she needed from JJ's quarters if it was openly available. It was an arrangement that suited them both: Pip could pretend JJ didn't know or keep careful records of what she took most regularly, JJ could keep an eye of the general health of one of the CIA's operatives without anyone being the wiser.

As far as painkillers were concerned, she'd never had anything strong on hand. It hadn't been deliberate, that sort of thing had simply been beyond her minor pilfering skills. She could see how Pip had assumed that she knew of her past drug problem.

JJ fidgeted, wriggling to try and find a position that avoided both the broken springs that creaked minutely whenever she breathed. "He cares a lot about you, he looked really worried." She chuckled. "You reduced the great David Rossi to begging. How many other women can say that?"

"Lots, I expect," sighed Pip. "I dare say there's a queue."

"Maybe once," JJ conceded, "but I'm telling you, he only has eyes for you." If she'd ever doubted it, that look of heartbreak on his face when she told him Pip was presumed KIA would have convinced her.

Pip shrugged. "Seaver's probably only a short while away from begging, her tongue practically rolls out whenever he walks past."

JJ laughed a little. "Ah, the first professional crush," she sighed theatrically. "Mine was an Academy instructor, you?" Although she had some sympathy with Seaver, because Rossi had been another…

"My commanding officer," murmured Pip with a twisted sort of smile.

"Hamilton or Perez?" asked JJ curiously, propping herself up in one elbow.

"I'd rather gnaw my own arm off than sleep with _Hamilton_ ," retorted Pip stridently. "Don't misunderstand, it's not because she's a woman, it's because she was a bitch."

JJ grinned. "Fair enough." She paused, wondering at the way Pip had phrased that explanation. "So not averse to the idea in principle, then… You ever…?"

Pip raised an eyebrow. "I'm open to it, I just never really met one I wanted. I might one day."

Pip smirked at her and JJ felt the heat rush to her face. Usually when she blushed, it was a slow thing, creeping up from her neckline. That knowing smirk had made it instant, bang, and she was glowing like a freakin' stop light.

"Or I could just snog my best friend at a sorority party," added Pip. She sounded so smugly knowing, JJ knew there was no point denying it.

"How do you know about that?" she squeaked.

Pip grinned broadly. "That blush told me."

JJ groaned and fanned her heated face. "I was, what? Nineteen? Gimme a break, I bet you did the same," she asserted. "Got to try everything once, right?" Lots of people did.

"Or three or four times, just to make sure," agreed Pip with a wink.

JJ giggled. Yes, quite. "So, if it wasn't Hamilton, it was Perez. The Captain and his aide. Well, _that's_ original."

Pip grinned. "Isn't it just? He was a married man and it was mostly hero worship; it fizzled itself out after six months or so." She rolled her eyes. "Nearly four years later we end up in bed together."

"Was it worth it?"

Pip let out a laugh that turned quickly to a groan, a pained wince crossing her face. "Yes," she grunted, "although the circumstances left something to be desired. Now stop making me laugh."

"At least you're smiling, and that's a vast improvement on earlier," remarked JJ. "Now you just need to talk to Rossi. _Properly_ talk to him."

Pip took a careful breath. "I've been _so_ careful to not let him see what I'm like and then he goes and drags me out here."

"But if you haven't told him," said JJ logically, "then he can't _possibly_ know why it bothers you so much. He's good, but he's not psychic."

"But telling him means he has to see it. What if he doesn't understand?"

The fear on Pip's face was genuine, and all the more ridiculous for that. JJ rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you've spent half your life in a war zone one way or another, balancing that line between action and secrecy, but you can't see what's right in front of you, can you?" She shook her head. "If he doesn't understand, _teach_ him. He'll learn, and willingly."

"But…"

"You taught _me_ ," snapped JJ fiercely. "He knows you better than I did, than I _still_ do, how could it _possibly_ be more difficult?"

Pip subsided, thoughtfully chewing her lower lip. "You may have a point," she conceded. "But I'm still mad at him."

JJ grinned. That was about as close as Pip would ever get to admitting she might have been wrong. "What's he like, anyway? It's like you two have a whole separate life together, outside the Bureau." Rossi had been a big inspiration, the reason she joined the FBI in the first place. Working with him was one thing, but what did a man like that do to chill out of an evening?

"As you'd expect," said Pip. "Kind, loyal, loving, compassionate. I think he's getting fucked off with having to hide it though. Us, I mean." She shrugged. "Nothing we can do about that. I'm sorry to shatter the illusion," she added with a mocking glance that made JJ's cheeks flush with heat once more, "but I'm afraid your idol farts in his sleep and watches Sunday afternoon tv through his eyelids after a big dinner, just like any other man."

JJ laughed. "Does he wake up and complain if you change channel, like Will does?"

"Oh yes," agreed Pip. "Frequently, especially if there's something on the other side that I want to watch."

"How did you two…"

"We don't have nearly enough hours left in the night for that long tale," interrupted Pip, somewhat to JJ's frustration. It was the second time she'd asked and been refused, and the opportunity was unlikely to come around for a third time. Pip glanced over and rolled her eyes. "I promise you a second night of wine and explanations on a future date of my choosing."

"As long as at least one is within the next month, depending on the pace of work," negotiated JJ. "And I want to know something now about how it all started," she insisted, "I'm not letting you off the hook that easy."

Pip nodded agreement to her terms, less reluctantly than JJ anticipated. It seemed Pip was back on an even keel again, having confessed and been forgiven her sins. It finally felt like she had her friend back.

"I knew it, first time I saw him," said Pip with a rueful sort of almost-shrug. "I'd do anything for him. It was the same when I first met Agent Hotchner. Gideon recruited me, but it wasn't him that sealed the deal."

JJ's mouth dropped open in shock and she sat up sharply. " _Hotch?_ You don't…I mean…"

Pip frantically shook her head and waved her hands in negation. "Not like that!"

JJ laughed and held her head in relief. "Oh, thank goodness!" She giggled. "For a second there…phew!" She shifted to sit next to Pip as she laughed, rather than laying back down. It wasn't like she had been able to get comfy anyway.

Pip's broad grin faltered as she battled not to laugh along with her. "No. He's handsome, but I could never…"

"Me either," agreed JJ. She knew exactly what Pip meant. Hotch was a good-looking guy, but she'd never felt more than friendship towards him. The thought of him being _with_ someone like that was a bit weird, like imagining your brother with someone. Will on the other hand, had heated the apex of her thighs and made her stomach leap with butterflies the first time she'd met him.

"I'd walk through fire for him though," said Pip. "I'm not a natural leader by any measure, I work best alone or following someone. The first time I met him, I knew he was a leader I could look up to, could follow. I'd follow him _anywhere_. I'd walk through fire for Dave too," she added, "but not for the same reason."

JJ nodded, understanding the difference Pip was trying to explain.

"Dave…Dave just kept… _being there_ , I suppose. No matter how hard I tried to keep him away, somehow, I'd always end up turning to him. By the time I realised what was happening, he was indispensable." Pip caught JJ's gaze, something undefinable shining in her eyes. "He makes me feel safe. He always has. Have you any idea how rare that feeling has been since I was ten?" She sighed, her eyes tightening a little with discomfort. "What you don't realise as a kid chafing against your parents' rules, is that they're only protecting you. I lost that, and then moved from foster home to foster home, always being the odd one out, even when I joined the Marines. I've spent most of my life fighting, whether it's to keep my blanket or a favourite book, or for my country, at home and abroad. I treasure every moment of safety because I always feel like I never know if it'll be my last. Everything else stemmed from that I guess, and now I can't imagine life without him."

Not the most romantic of tales, but JJ had expected nothing less. Hearts and flowers simply wasn't Pip's style, probably one of the few things they _didn't_ have in common.

"You ok, Pip?" asked JJ as they settled down to sleep what was left of the night away. "I mean, really ok?"

"I dunno," replied Pip, probably completely honestly. "You?"

JJ considered that as she futilely tried to get comfortable, using her rolled up jacket as a makeshift pillow. She was, more or less. She felt like she'd dealt with what she'd seen, for the most part. She had occasional nightmares, but then who wouldn't? Even the miscarriage felt distant, like it was another life or had happened to somebody else. She was ok, but… "I'm different," she said finally.

Pip nodded sadly. "Yeah, that happens," she said gently, as JJ turned off the bedside light. "The person that comes back is never the same as the one who went."

They lay in silence, the quiet between them thick and almost suffocating.

"Pip?" whispered JJ into the darkness. She couldn't quite put the question into words, in the same way she hadn't been able to in Afghanistan. It was stupid, she was a grown woman, a _mother_ for goodness sake! But she couldn't help it.

It had been a long few days and talking about what they'd been doing in the desert had stirred up a lot of the emotions that had gone with it. Which included grief for the woman sat upright in the bed next to her. Somehow the darkness had taken away the reassurance that vision brought: that Pip was alive and back in the BAU where she belonged.

"Come here."

JJ could hear the smile in Pip's stern order, the familiar reassurance. Whatever Pip had needed from her that evening, she'd found it, and they were back in their usual dynamic. She turned over gratefully, pillowing her head on Pip's muscular thighs. With Pip's arm draped protectively across her shoulders, JJ could sleep.


	2. Mudgie

_A/n: In my defence, I've been given morphine for my back pain and this idea just came to me one night while I was flying high… Big shout out to Moonsgoddess (if she's reading this!) for her continual insights regarding canine behaviour and her wonderful hugs. Love you chick!_

 _Mudgie_

 _ **A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself - Josh Billings**_

Mudgie lay on his back, all four paws in the air. He loved these lazy early mornings, when She was up but He wasn't. She had been away for a long time, and He had been miserable, but now She was back and that meant early morning belly-rubs with a distinct possibility of bacon. Bliss.

Humans were strange animals. They came in different shapes and sizes, much like dogs; some had different markings or colouring, and like dogs, they could interbreed despite those differences. Some of the results proved that not all matches were necessarily ideal or wise, but that wasn't why they were strange.

It was their peculiar mating rituals. Mostly, mating occurred in the sleeping area – which was weird to start with, but it could also be in or around the main living area of the territory. Occasionally, it was outside, but this seemed to involve whispering, giggling and much furtive glancing around, at least until they really got into the swing of things.

They had different strategies, depending on what the outcome was meant to be. Some of His females had only visited once. Some hadn't at all, the only evidence being their scent on His clothes and body when He came home. That kind of mating was casual, almost opportunistic, and the ritual demanded very little. Food and drink were sometimes involved, but didn't seem to always be necessary. Some of the long journeys when He had taken Mudgie with Him in the past, had involved a virtual revolving door of females all willing to mate with Him; apparently without any kind of chasing or ritual at all.

The ones that stuck around longer tended to involve a bit of chasing first. That at least, Mudgie understood. It made sense. How else were you supposed to prove you were good enough? Sometimes there was rivalry for the female too, which was also perfectly logical. Wasn't that the whole point?

But even then, with the complete ritual observed, none of them had stayed very long. Until Her.

Her scent had been on Him for a long time before Mudgie had met Her. She matched Him perfectly, His ideal mate, and suddenly everything had made sense. They complemented each other in a way they would never find with any other partner. That was how mating worked for humans, and that was why they were strange. Regardless of any casual mating behaviour, they had look for a life-partner, another human to stay with for the rest of their life as a permanent mate.

From observation, it seemed that this was actually quite difficult. Many humans never found their life-mate and remained alone, or settled with someone less than ideal. Some didn't appreciate humans of a different gender, preferring to find one of their own to spend time with. Some humans were just built wrong, smelling and acting as one gender, but presenting physically as quite another. That had to make it harder for them to look. From an evolutionary standpoint, it was an incredibly awkward way of going about things.

His human had looked extensively for His life-mate, sometimes more than once a day, for most of Mudgie's early life. It had tapered off in later years, the mating becoming more and more infrequent as He lost the will to search any longer. Some of His females in that time had to be sent packing, in Mudgie's official role of guardian to his human. Everyone knew humans were intellectually challenged and needed looking after, and He obviously hadn't been able to sense that those females had smelled untrustworthy and deceitful.

She had been injured, the first time they'd met. It had been almost eighteen months since Her scent had started to regularly cling to His clothes, long enough that She was no longer a stranger, yet it was the first time He had brought Her home. They had mated once, quite a long time previously, but not since. Mudgie remembered being very confused about that. Human females didn't go through heat the same way bitches did, but he could smell Her interest in Him over Her anger as clearly as he could smell His interest in Her over His shame. They had to realise that the pair-bond had already formed, surely? Even humans weren't _that_ oblivious of the world around them. But they didn't act on it, instead engaging in an antagonistic sparring match which resulted in both of them leaking around the eyes. They eventually fell asleep on the couch, but when Mudgie roused them to go to bed, hoping perhaps they'd get the message and start mating, they went to bed and straight back to sleep. Odd creatures.

The ritual had continued, without any mating. She'd started to come on guard patrol with them in the countryside surrounding His territory; cementing Herself as the alpha female of their tiny pack the first time She did so by proving Herself in battle against Him. They were only delicate humans, so they fought their test of dominance with sticks rather than tooth and claw, but the intent was definitely the same.

She hadn't visited His home all that often, even after winning Her place as alpha, but whenever She did, both their scents would sharpen acutely with mating pheromones. In the past, Mudgie had observed Him with females that only mildly interested Him, and the pheromones had been barely enough to detect. He would pay lip-service to the ritual, then mate with them anyway. This one had Him all but salivating, yet He had held Himself back from mating with Her. Weren't humans peculiar?

He _kept_ holding Himself back too, time and time again, and Mudgie was finally sure that it was going to have to be Her to break the deadlock. They got very close to managing it, several times. She'd turned up one afternoon at home while He was out, bundled all of Mudgie's belongings into a bag and transported them and him to Her territory. Mudgie had been rather hoping that meant they were finally denning together, but it proved temporary. He had been exhausted for weeks, and She was simply doing exactly the same thing as Mudgie had been trying to do. Look after Him. When it was done, He and Mudgie moved back into His territory, leaving Mudgie nearly growling with frustration.

Just before She vanished, She had been sad and He had brought Her home with Him again. They had been talking on the sofa and there had been this brief moment when they seemed to be perfectly in sync. They had stared at each other for longer than they probably realised, but then He had backed off. Again. _So_ close. Mudgie had curled up in his bed by the kitchen in a huff that night, frustrated to the extreme.

Hoping that perhaps that moment might lead to another one soon, one they _wouldn't_ be able to resist, Mudgie had been eagerly anticipating Her next visit; possibly almost as much as Him, who also seemed to have finally realised the time had come to stop chasing. They waited and waited, and…nothing. He didn't seem overly worried at first. The longer She was absent however, the less calm He was. He took to pacing at night, wondering aloud about Her whereabouts and well-being.

Something had happened around that time, something that profoundly changed Him. He smelled desperately sad, He slept less, and drank more of the smelly-amber He kept in the cupboard in the living area. He was short-tempered and didn't cook very often, which meant no tasty morsels to steal while He wasn't looking. Then He stopped talking about Her entirely, and that was when Mudgie realised that She might not be coming back. His human had suffered the loss of his life-mate, without even having properly mated with Her.

Given the cognitive deficiencies of humans, there hadn't been much Mudgie could do for Him, other than offer silent support and warm physical reassurance. Anything else would be lost on Him – humans weren't the sharpest noses in the litter, after all. It was amazing they'd made it beyond the cave-dwellers his dam had told him and his litter-brothers and sisters stories of, those stories passed down from generation to generation from the first wolves that had decided humans really did a helping hand in order to survive.

Somehow, She had returned, long after He had given up hope of ever seeing Her again. It had been an emotional reunion, and Mudgie had been rather pleased to note that their reticence about mating seemed to have vanished. As the pack travelled to His second territory, the smell of their combined desires had been so overwhelming he'd had to stick his nose out the window for some relief. In the few hours between Him dashing in for a flying visit to talk to the female who kept His territory clean, and picking Mudgie up the following morning, they had mated several times and positively _reeked_ of it.

That behaviour didn't stop. It seemed they were making up for lost time, or perhaps He was aware His time was running out to sire pups. It was a shame that She would never be able to give Him any, because they would have been beautiful. Her scent made it clear that she lacked some of the attributes necessary to carry pups to term, but it didn't stop them trying anyway. Mudgie wondered if they knew. Humans couldn't tell, apparently, until repeated mating failed to produce a litter. They must have some idea, because She had fighting scars across her body and forelegs, and wounds taken in battle often had long-term consequences. Even _humans_ knew that.

For three weeks, they did little but mate with each other. Humans had some cheek, didn't they? After years of telling Mudgie off for licking himself in public, they were quite happy to lick each other in front of him with absolutely no shame. They didn't restrict their mating to the sleeping area either, although they made extensive use of it nonetheless. Mudgie took to guarding against squirrels whenever their pheromones spiked, because there was no point trying to interact with them when they were so deeply occupied with each other. Those squirrels needed watching anyway, so it was a win-win situation.

Mudgie took his job seriously. Without dogs to guide them, humans would still be sitting in trees eating their dinner while it was still wriggling. They lacked the scenting and tracking skills to survive alone, as evidenced by the diseased poultry they had been planning to eat. They'd dashed away on an urgent errand, leaving the bird out in the open, prepped for cooking. It had smelled wrong, but their noses weren't sensitive enough to notice. It would have made them sick if they'd eaten it. When they'd returned, smelling of smoke and forest fires, they had seemed surprised Mudgie hadn't claimed it for himself, but his refusal of the meat had correctly led them to the conclusion that it wasn't safe for them to eat. Mudgie knew he could have eaten it without any danger, but their constitution wasn't as formidable as his.

That interaction led to a significant bump in the path of their growing pair-bond. She still hadn't claimed His territory as Her own as was Her right as alpha, preferring to maintain Her own den in addition to using His. Humans thought the males were in charge, and projected that erroneous idea onto dogs too. In truth, it was the females who ruled, as every intelligent life form knew. Without them, there'd be no pups, and whilst it was the male's job to protect and provide for them, the females laid down the law.

She proved that, by withholding mating privileges when She grew angry with Him. Lacking the mental capacity to understand Her actions just proved how stupid human males could be. Even Him, who seemed to be brighter than the average biped. That hadn't stopped Him making a mess of things, and Mudgie had to forcibly prevent himself from intervening. You had to let humans work it out for themselves, otherwise how would they develop? Unfortunately, it was a terribly slow process, as evidenced by that fact that even after millions of years, they were still like young pups in their capacity.

She had stormed out, showing Her distain for His territory by slamming the den door closed with a bang as She left. He didn't seem to immediately understand that He ought to chase Her, that in the circumstances, renewing the mating chase was the only way to get back in Her good graces. Mudgie helped Him along with a disapproving whine, the most he felt he could do without breaking The Lore: Protect, guard, defend, but _do not_ interfere.

He got the idea eventually, but it took a depressingly long time for Him to work it out. Humans!

The incident had led to Mudgie's first physical interaction with Poppy, so something good had come of it in the end. She was young, and while her scent had been around Her territory for years, enough to merge with Hers a little, she was ill-educated and impulsive. Once proper nose-to-anus introductions had been made, Mudgie had shown her exactly what her behaviour would lead to if she didn't mend her ways. He was bigger and her elder, but she was female, so he had to be a bit careful.

Thankfully, her size and inexperience meant she scrambled out of his way rather than facing him down. Her previous human had been old, frail and hadn't looked after her basic needs very well. Her new human was younger and seemed to genuinely care about her, and Mudgie had given her some pointers. No more chewing on shoes. No more marking inside her territory with faeces and urine. Tone down the barking. Humans didn't appreciate the important sentiments behind those behaviours, continuing to do so when they didn't understand was a good way to end up shamed and homeless, waiting in a shelter for another human to pick her as their guardian. She'd been inherited, not chosen, and there was a delicate balance that needed to be struck in order for the relationship to work.

Poppy was lucky, many dogs died in shelters waiting for a chance to help humans. Not everyone had a second chance drop into their paws quite so easily.

Mudgie wondered how long it would be before He had another guardian; he knew his time was coming. Every dog did. Humans lived a long time, and it would take several generations of canine guardians to see one through their lifespan. Each dog just had to hope that they'd done enough for their human to manage until another guardian arrived. Mudgie's long service to Him was approaching its end, he could feel the weakness starting to creep up on him. Eyesight, hearing, mobility, it was all beginning to fail. He could muster the energy for a romp occasionally, but those times were becoming fewer and farther between.

All the time She was there with Him, Mudgie wouldn't need to worry. She looked after Him, made sure He ate when He got engrossed in something, and made Him happy when He was sad. Maybe they'd form a new pack together, adopting unwanted pups from others, and finding a new guardian to look after them all. As long as She was there, He would be fine.

It wouldn't be long now, Mudgie knew that in his tired heart. It had been a good life, and he'd kept his human safe from harm in all its guises, everything from duplicitous females to the infernal squirrels. He hadn't sired any pups, but that was usually the case for guardians such as he. He came from good, strong bloodlines, so there was undoubtedly a litter brother or sister, or possibly both, who had ensured their genetic legacy would live on. That was enough.

Mudgie flopped over onto his side, unable to lay comfortably on his back quite the way he used to. He snuffled Her hands, showing his appreciation for the belly-rub. She had more patience with it than He did, He tended to get distracted by something and forget all about what He was supposed to be doing.

Not to mention that a hearty thank you would probably help his case for some bacon. Manners never hurt anyone, especially if there was to be food involved.

She smelled…well, She smelled like they'd been mating again during the night, but that wasn't unusual. There was almost a _heaviness_ about Her, like something was on her mind that She didn't think She could talk to Him about.

Mudgie didn't mind, He talked all the time. He'd pontificate endlessly, asking Mudgie questions and then responding as if there had been a reply. There had been times Mudgie had been sorely tempted, just to stop Him doing something _really_ stupid. It was part of the job to listen silently, projecting compassion with soulful glances. You cocked your ears inquisitively when they stopped, or lovingly rested a paw on their knee as encouragement to continue. That non-judgemental empathy was the reason humans didn't go completely barmy bottling all their feelings up inside.

She had never talked to him before, and Mudgie felt honoured that his alpha would let him comfort Her by listening. He licked under Her chin and wagged his tail, happily signalling his agreement.

There was another male she was troubled by. Mudgie had smelled him on Her clothes, so his presence wasn't a surprise. They weren't mating, She had no desire to dishonour the pair-bond with Him. But this other male, he definitely wanted to steal her away, and perhaps on some level, She realised that. They had known each other since she was barely more than a pup, and had mated in the past. It had been the casual kind, with no ritual involved other than a requirement for mutual comfort, but the male interloper's smell told of hidden desire and longing. She was alpha and female, but She was also human, so She was a bit thick. She didn't seem to know it was Her place to send this other male on his way, if that was what She wanted. Unfortunately He shambled down the stairs before She'd reached that conclusion, but at least that meant bacon.

Or not. Her emotions were running high, and that spiked her pheromones. He picked up on it, and they indulged their mutual desires, right there in front of him.

Mudgie resolutely turned his head away to watch the squirrels and sighed. It looked like bacon would have to wait.


	3. Morgan

_Morgan_

 _ **We had grown into one another somewhere along the way. We were officially a team - Shannon A. Thompson**_

Morgan followed the sound of cursing, a little warily. He was well aware of the smug, amused looks her team had exchanged when he asked where Harker was. "Had a disagreement with the new photocopier," had been Griffin's bland response, but the underlying air of humour between the three of them was clear. The closer Morgan got to the fancy new combined printer/scanner/photocopier, the more obvious it became that Harker hadn't just disagreed with it, she was _still_ disagreeing with it, and had been for quite some time. At volume, using rather choice language.

"Hunk of fucking _junk!_ _Work_ will you, you piece of _shit!_ "

It didn't sound like she was winning. Morgan rounded the corner and stopped just out of sight in case her frustration extended to those in the immediate vicinity of the copier, as well as the copier itself.

Harker was on her knees, ass in the air, with her left arm buried to the shoulder in the guts of the machine as she swore at it. "I've found every last scrap of paper you shredded trying to print, you useless sack of bolts," she growled to it. "I _know_ I have, so _stop_ …fucking me about!"

Morgan grinned to himself and leaned casually against the wall to watch. It wasn't a bad view, as female posteriors went, and having her vocabulary aimed at someone else was always entertaining.

Harker twitched a little. "Ow! Fucker!" she cried, yanking her arm abruptly out from the copier's innards. "Bastard son of a fucking _blender!_ " She gave the machine a hearty thump and leapt to her feet. "You wanted a tribute, huh?" she snarled to it. "You _sure_ that's the way you're gonna to play it?"

She slammed the cover closed and the multifunction copier whirred into life. Morgan looked on with interest. After quite a long time grinding and procrastinating, a page printed successfully without being chewed. It was pristine…apart from the red smear down one side.

Harker shrugged, like she hadn't expected anything different. "Better," she admitted grudgingly. "Now, how about the rest of it?"

The copier thought about it for a moment before spitting out another red-streaked page, then juddered to a halt, bleeping its displeasure. "Your mother was a cheap toaster oven and I sent her to the scrap heap in _pieces_ ," Harker hissed venomously, kicking it viciously in the drawers. "I _hate_ you!"

"Hey, hey, no need for that," Morgan assured her as she swung her foot back for another go, feeling that it was about time he made his presence known, if only to stop her kicking the poor printer to death. "I think it knows already."

She hung her head in almost-defeat. "The engineers are going to laugh at me."

Morgan was already doing that, although he stopped when Harker glared at him. "Why will they laugh at you? For trying to fix it?" he asked curiously.

"For bleeding in it." Harker turned away to hold her hand over a trash can to save dripping on the floor. "Again. It seems to like me."

Definitely a love-hate relationship. Morgan grabbed her hand, which she'd apparently sliced open on something sharp inside the photocopier. "You need to get that seen to."

Harker snatched her hand back and wrapped it carelessly in a handkerchief from her pocket. "It's nothing, I'll live."

Morgan watched as the white cotton rapidly dampened to red. "It's more than nothing. Your handkerchief is ruined."

Harker smirked. "Don't worry, it isn't mine." She flapped her uninjured hand dismissively. "What do you need?"

He'd seen her cavalier attitude towards her own well-being before, when she came out to Alabama to join the rest of the team. Aside from her little show with the knife, the reckless decision to split up in that barn had been hers, and it could have had far more serious consequences.

"I think I need you to take that seriously," he said, pointing to her bloodied hand. "You're no good to me if you're dying of toner poisoning or something."

Harker shot him a genuinely amused smirk. "It'll take a bit more than a temperamental photocopier to get rid of _me_ , Agent Morgan."

Actually, Morgan thought he already knew that. Her bearing spoke volumes about the quality of her previous FBI training, and it was clear she could handle herself in close quarters. She still carried the knife he'd seen in Alabama at her back too, if the shape he'd seen under her shirt when she was bent over was anything to go by.

"At least let me find a med kit and dress it properly," he negotiated. He wasn't much of a field medic, but he was proficient enough for that.

Harker rolled her eyes. "Fine," she groaned. "Lead on."

He wanted privacy anyway, so he took her back to his office rather than heading for the nearest first aid kit in the break room. The cut wasn't as bad as he'd initially feared, something Harker took great pleasure in pointing out. It had bled itself clean, more or less, and Morgan made quick work of binding the wound, happy to let it heal naturally.

He stood to put the med kit away and perched himself on the edge of desk facing her.

"You found him, didn't you?" she asked, even before he opened his mouth.

Morgan nodded. That was why he'd involved her in the hunt for Doyle. She knew he'd found Declan, without him even needing to say so. She thought the same way he did, shared the same ability to think around corners that eluded the others. He didn't need to explain all the steps in his deductive leaps to her, she was right there with him, keeping pace as he worked it out. He wondered if her brusque attitude was a result of that in some way. He knew how frustrating it could be sometimes, waiting for colleagues to catch up with him, and it had to be just the same for her. Probably even more so, given that her team weren't field operatives and never had been: there were some things they'd just _never_ understand.

At the start of his search, he tried to learn as much as he could about international arms dealings and the relationships between rivals. It was a logical first place to look for news of Doyle, who would have needed help to vanish in the way he had. Doyle didn't have friends, which only left business associates of one form or another that he could have turned to. Morgan had requested a variety of indirectly related information from different members her team, confident that none of them would put the pieces together and see the whole.

A week later, a thin file had arrived on his desk. Inside were two sheets of paper, covered on both sides with Harker's rounded script. Stuck to the inside cover of the file was a yellow post-it, also in Harker's handwriting.

" _Next time, ask me_ _properly_ _."_

Those two sheets of paper were more useful than anything he actually asked for. Rather than stacks of goods manifests and airline booking records, she'd given him a detailed breakdown of the complicated web of enmity and favours in the murky world of weapon sales, as far as she knew it or could find out. Notes about who owed whom, who was sleeping with someone's sister, who had turned informant in exchange for immunity. It was essentially a list of people that might be leveraged for information on Doyle's whereabouts, and what form that leverage would have to take. She'd known exactly what he was doing and had given him everything he needed before he knew he'd need it. She'd even told him who to start with first.

He _had_ asked her properly. Before he'd even finished reading what she'd given him.

Looking for Doyle directly hadn't panned out. Too many people had died or retired, some of them at the same time, power struggles between arms dealers being what they were. Doyle was hiding, and if anyone had seen him, they weren't talking. They found nothing.

It had been Harker who gave him his new direction, although Morgan sincerely doubted she'd intended such. She'd scribbled a frustrated post-it note on the latest set of dead-ends from their secretive investigation and the answer had hit him so hard it felt like a hammer blow.

" _Nothing! Where is he? What's he_ _doing?_ _"_

What _was_ Doyle doing? Because it certainly didn't look like he was buying or selling weapons. That got him thinking. Instead of thinking like an ordinary UnSub arms dealer in hiding, he should be thinking like _Doyle_. Doyle's priorities were different, weren't they? Then it struck him.

Doyle wasn't hiding. _Doyle was looking for Declan._

Morgan could have kicked himself. He'd wasted time looking for someone who knew how to disappear, while the boy was out in the open somewhere under a new identity. It would be much easier to find _him_ , and then simply wait for Doyle to show up.

He had no qualms about asking Harker to research things that might lead him to Declan. She dug out old evidence, retrieved files out of the archives, even ran interference for him when he was late back for a case briefing. Her assistance, subtle and clandestine as it had been, had proved as invaluable as Garcia's.

"Yeah, I found him," he confirmed. "Now I need to watch him."

Harker considered him. Somehow, even though he was in the dominant position towering over her sat casually on his couch, Morgan felt like he was being scrutinised by the school principal. Hotch would give him that sort of look occasionally, and it always made him wonder uneasily what it was he'd done wrong.

"Three cameras," she said finally. "I can't hide any more than that without getting really creative with the inventory."

Morgan nodded eagerly. Three was two more than he thought he'd get. "Live remote viewing, tied into Garcia's babies but otherwise off-network?" She nodded. "And cover as I place them in case we get called out."

Harker shook her head with a smile. "You think I'm going to let you near my cameras? Not a chance. Either I do it or you don't get them."

Morgan clenched his jaw. "It's better if you don't get involved."

Harker stood and leaned forward menacingly. "I made that choice when I called in some valuable favours in exchange for information," she growled. " _Do not_ make the mistake of thinking you are the only one with a personal stake in this."

He was looking for justice, which would also be his vengeance. She was seeking to atone for something, although he couldn't for the life of him work out what it might be. Somehow, finding and stopping Doyle _meant_ something to her, which was weird because she hadn't even been around when Emily died, and it wasn't like they'd been friends.

"I'm in it whether you like it or not," she added sternly. Then she grinned, suddenly so cheerful and open that Morgan wondered for a moment if it was for the benefit of someone walking past his still-open office door. "I won't tell if you won't."

The abrupt shift in her demeanour prompted a reflexive laugh from him. "Hotch knows what I'm doing," he reassured her, "but if you want me to keep you out of it, you're going to have to let me install the cameras."

"No. My key, my cameras, my rules," she said bluntly. "We do it together." She held up a small silver key, then folded her arms and jutted her chin defiantly.

"Harker…" Morgan tried to turn on the charm, much as he would with Garcia when he needed something.

Harker shook her head. "Those pleading eyes might work on Penny, but not on me. You want the key so badly, try and take it," she taunted.

She'd offered him that kind of challenge before, but they'd not had an opportunity to spar properly like he wanted to. "But you're injured," he disputed.

Harker shook her head and tutted dismissively. "Fine, I'll go easy on you."

Morgan grinned and darted forward, thinking to catch her off-guard. Harker evaded him neatly, turning her body so that his momentum carried him just past her before he could stop. She grabbed his belt and pulled him backwards, upsetting his balance by sticking her foot in the back of his knee. A sharp point dug into his spine, and Morgan froze. "Alright, you win," he conceded warily, and the blade was withdrawn. "Where'd you learn to do that?" he asked as they separated, a little put-out that she'd bested him so easily, despite the confined space working against him and her cheating by immediately reaching for her blade.

"Two seasons of playing rugby in England taught me the side-step," said Harker. "The Senate finance committee taught me the value of using stationery as a weapon," she added smugly, replacing the pencil she'd stuck in his back to its place on his desk.

She hadn't drawn her knife on him at all. He felt a little silly for falling for it. "Didn't the FBI teach you not to let your attacker get back up after you'd subdued them?" he argued playfully, "especially having surrendered your weapon." He pinned her dominant hand to his desk and ignored her protests about dishonourable tactics.

They laughed as they tussled, knocking over his in-tray in the process. Morgan did his best to get a proper grip on her, but Harker writhed in his grasp like a snake-human hybrid. He was stronger, taller and heavier by far, but it was like trying to catch a frenetic ferret. She squirmed out of his hold once again, and in desperation he attempted to reach for the knife at her back. He'd barely got near it before he stopped, held by a second he hadn't known she was carrying. So busy with trying to restrain her, Morgan didn't see where it came from. The tip rested casually against his throat, held steady despite the dressing around her left hand making her grip awkward.

"Now who's using dishonourable tactics, huh?" he panted, more out of breath than he'd ever admit. The limited space of his office had put him at a disadvantage, unable to use the speed and power his physicality gave him.

"You're both stronger and taller than me," said Harker. "If someone like you was _really_ attacking me, they'd _never_ get up after I subdued them."

If he'd doubted it before, the blade at his neck convinced him. Morgan held up his hands in respectful surrender. "You and I should spend some time in the gym together," he offered, watching closely as the knife was stowed away. "A bra with a holster? Really?"

Harker grinned. "Beats a padded one."

He knew a trap when he saw one, no matter what he said to that, it would be wrong. She wasn't the most well-endowed of women, but her muscular body-shape meant that what she did have was nicely proportionate. "You up for it?" he asked again, ignoring the deadly pitfall she'd put in his path, "see if you can walk the walk without something sharp to help you, huh?" Her style was intriguing, and he wanted to see more of the moves she used. They weren't FBI standard training, that was for _damn_ sure.

"I'm up for it, but clear it with Rossi first," she insisted. "I don't want to get into trouble when I hurt you."

Morgan threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, you are _on_."

* * *

Placing the cameras had to wait as the team got called out on yet another a case, but Morgan could leave knowing Harker would keep as close an eye as she could on Declan while he was away. They'd discussed and agreed that in a split-second of eye contact as he passed her desk on his way out, and he also knew she would have picked out some good hiding places for their cameras by the time he got back.

She had, although she over-estimated her climbing skills again. It was hard to be covert when your partner-in-crime managed to get herself stuck up a tree.

"Can't you just find me a ladder?" Harker complained plaintively, hidden somewhere high up amongst the leaves. "There's got to be one around here _somewhere_."

"Breaking and entering. Yeah, why didn't I think of that?" Morgan scoffed, rolling his eyes even though he knew she couldn't see him. "We're supposed to be…"

"Dog walker!" she hissed, and he fell silent, fiddling with his cell; checking his emails as he waited for the man with a dog to walk past.

"Can't you just come back down the way you went up?" he asked when the coast was clear.

"If it was that easy, I would have done it already," she retorted sharply.

"Speaks Russian, hides a knife in her bra but can't climb trees. How exactly did you manage to join the FBI?" he mocked, before taking another worried glance at his watch. If she didn't work out how to get down soon, he really might have to resort to burglary otherwise their absence from the BAU would be noticed.

"I can climb up trees just _fine!_ " she spat with an accompanying shower of leaves. "It's getting _down_ …that's the _problem!_ " More leaves started to drift down, accompanied by the sounds of movement. "I wasn't trained for…such _excessive_ foliage."

Morgan took a step backwards as a hail of twigs was added to the leaves still falling like rain. There'd be none left to conceal the camera if she kept it up.

"And I joined the FBI…" growled Harker, nearer than she had been and rapidly getting closer, "…because after the Marines…" she landed in front of him, "…I fancied a _rest._ "

He grinned smugly. "I told you to get down the same way you got up there." He'd been right, and he'd played her perfectly. Harker had scampered up the tree like a hyperactive squirrel but had faltered when faced with picking her way carefully back down. She needed to attack the descent with the same gusto in order to get down safely and goading her temper had worked like a charm.

Harker rolled her eyes and grabbed his wrist to look at his watch. "If we're going to get back without anyone being any the wiser, we need to get a move on."

"And why is that?" teased Morgan as he folded himself gracefully behind the wheel of his car. "What delayed us, I wonder?"

Harker thumped him good-naturedly across the shoulder and laughed as she climbed in beside him. The more he talked to her, the more she felt like a teammate he'd never known he was missing. Reid was the best lil bro a man could wish for, and he loved JJ and Garcia and the bossman like family. Even Rossi had grown on him, after a rocky start. Harker was different. She understood his mix of brain and brawn, where others, even the team on occasion, forgot he had the former when he used the latter. She understood that he wanted to pummel Doyle into paste, but she also understood that he wanted to be smart about doing it so that Doyle would get either locked up or dead, all nice and legally.

Harker was loud and boisterous and certainly not your typical female agent, if there was such a thing. She was one of the guys, in a way he'd not really seen before. She didn't overcompensate for her gender like others he'd seen in the Bureau, or make allowances for it like Seaver had; she just ignored it entirely. She would return any banter with interest, taking enjoyment from skating right up to the edge of being inappropriate, accompanied by that megawatt smile that probably had scores of guys walking around with a semi in their pants. She was respectful to Hotch, but the way she handled Rossi was barely short of bullying; although Morgan had noticed that Rossi actually seemed to like it and would often go out of his way to provoke her.

She was happy to hand out chastisement yet while she never pulled her punches verbally, she _would_ physically. Like he did, wary of hurting others if he let himself get carried away. As the leader of a team of guys, she would engage them occasionally in a sort of teasing roughhousing, but she was always very careful not to go too far.

 _That_ was why he wanted to test her in the gym. He wanted to see just what she was capable of when she let her hair down.

Harker nudged his elbow. "It took us over an hour to get here. If you don't get going, I'll have to drive to get us back in time."

"You reckon you're better than me?" he asked doubtfully, as the engine purred into life. "I can have us back in the office in less than forty-five minutes, you watch."

Harker sat back and folded her arms. "Go on then. Impress me."

* * *

"If you weren't trained for _foliage_ …" he chuckled in remembrance of her indignation, "…what _were_ you trained for?" Morgan asked curiously as they turned onto I95.

"Languages, actually," she replied. "Mostly middle-eastern. Certainly not _trees_."

He laughed. "I could tell. So why the BAU, if languages are your speciality? I doubt we have much call for your skills, I would have thought you'd request an overseas office rather than Quantico. You didn't even seem happy about joining us." She'd been a complete bitch actually, and had only mellowed with time. It had taken more than three years before she started to properly chill out and be approachable; a change that coincided with both Gideon's departure and Rossi's arrival. He pondered that for a moment, wondering if there was a connection.

She hesitated before replying, then evaded his curious glance across from the driving seat long enough that he had to return his eyes to the road. "Long story," she muttered finally.

"People's lives always are," he disputed.

Harker grunted her grudging agreement. "When my field creds were medically rescinded, Gideon paid me a visit. He made me an offer that I would have been stupid to refuse, and here I am." She hesitated. "He was on his way back when he ran across Footpath."

Why had he never bothered to really talk to her? Even the hour's drive to Reston had been mostly silent apart from the odd work-related exchange. She'd been part of the furniture for five years and yet he'd only just learned why she was part of the BAU in the first place. Her post had been vacant since before the debacle in Boston that had broken Gideon, and her arrival so swiftly on the heels of his return should have made him more curious.

Her posture, what little he could see from the corner of his eye, was defensive and closed-off; her wording and intonation evasive and filled with old hurt…

"You were close to him, weren't you?" Morgan breathed in amazement. "Why didn't the rest of us see that?" Nobody ever paid much attention to her or her team, but _somebody_ should have noticed. "Because that's the way you both wanted it," he said after a moment's thought. Why would that be? "Just how _close_ were you?" he asked suspiciously.

Harker spluttered indignantly. "Not _that_ close."

That was a relief, given everything that happened with Sarah. "But you both got something you needed, didn't you?" he asserted.

She groaned and rolled her eyes. "Urgh, _profilers_. Is nothing sacred?" She folded her arms defensively. "You're all the same, you all want to exhume _every_ little detail, don't you?"

Morgan shifted in his seat. It hadn't immediately occurred to him that she'd be uncomfortable with his inquisitive train of thought, and Harker looked away again when he tried to catch her eye. Gideon always had a way of asking the uncomfortable questions, usually when you couldn't escape. Somehow, he'd managed to do the same. "It stays in this car, alright?" he promised her, "I'm just so surprised nobody knew." Not to mention he had a _terminal_ case of curiosity.

"Fine," Harker grunted unhappily after a moment. "He helped me. He's the reason I knew someone in Narcotics Anonymous when…" She stopped. "Well, you know."

He did know: when Reid had gone off the rails after Hankel, the open secret none of them ever talked about. Gideon had helped her through a drug problem.

"Did you know he was going to leave?" he accused. Two people working together to battle addiction would be more than just friends, and Morgan unhappily re-visited his previous thoughts that something inappropriate might have been going on. Had there been a quarrel of some sort, a lover's tiff, perhaps?

She didn't try to evade him when he looked over a third time, and the expression on her face prompted an immediate retraction of everything he'd thought or said in the previous few seconds. "I'm sorry. I guess we're all still a little touchy about the way he left."

Harker nodded grimly. "Yeah. Feels like a betrayal, doesn't it?"

It did, a bit. That was the uncomfortable truth about the matter. It had been the best thing for Gideon, leaving. They all knew it. He couldn't handle it anymore, and it was better he went before he did something else that put others in danger. It was the _way_ he'd done it that meant the anger still smouldered under the surface, occasionally fanned into flame. Even after everything that happened, to just abandon the team without a word, to leave poor Reid _hanging_ like that, with only a letter…

"Did you get a letter too?" asked Morgan. None of them spoke to Gideon, or at least never mentioned if they did, and he always had been an unknowable enigma. The curiosity, the drive for more information about his abrupt departure overruled compassion for a moment. "Did he give you a better explanation than the happy endings bullshit he gave Reid?"

"No," she growled angrily. "I just got a post-it stuck to my front door. He made it _quite_ clear our association was at an end, and added that I wasn't to go looking for him. I didn't."

Morgan winced. That was worse than Reid's letter, although the fact that Gideon bothered to let her know at all spoke to the depth of their relationship. Nobody else had got so much as a backward glance. "I'm sorry," he repeated, meaning both for what happened and for prying into it.

"You need to pick up the pace if we're going to get back in time," Harker replied, and just like that, the subject of Gideon was emphatically slammed closed.

Morgan knew better than to object, and honestly, he didn't want to talk about Gideon either.

"Clear!" barker Harker from the passenger seat. She grinned at him when he glanced over. "You need to drive _properly_. Put your foot down, I'll spot you."

Morgan changed down a gear and revved the engine, darting into the gap she'd seen. "Yes, ma'am."

He accelerated, starting to weave through the traffic. It was the perfect conditions for such a run, mostly clear but with enough obstacles to make it interesting. With Harker always scanning his blind spots he could be more creative than usual, and Morgan whooped aloud as he drove. He loved going fast, he always had, ever since he got his first push-bike as a boy. The thrill of speed, the possibilities of an open road had always lured him. He'd signed up for every additional driving instruction course the Bureau offered, and a few more besides, honing his love into a formidable skill that was all the more enjoyable because it could occasionally be used to terrify his passengers.

Not Harker. She was enjoying herself immensely as they all but flew down the road, her eyes sparkling whenever he caught her gaze. Her love of speed obviously rivalled his and he pushed the car faster and faster, just because he could. The miles and the minutes streaked past, each bringing them closer to home.

"Clear!"

Morgan moved before he thought, nearly forty minutes of their driving partnership having instilled implicit trust in her judgement. Once he _did_ think however, he realised they didn't have enough room. "Fu-"

Harker just laughed as the RV pulled aside, giving them precious yards to escape the semi-truck bearing down on them. It blasted past, blaring its horn.

"He's speeding," said Harker conversationally. "Where's Highway Patrol when you need them?"

Considering the speed they'd been going a minute previously, perhaps it was a good thing they weren't around. Morgan had more pressing matters on his mind, however.

"You're crazy!" he yelled. "Are you _trying_ to get us killed?" He cut across the highway to the outside lane and slowed down. "What the fuck was that?"

Harker shrugged negligently. "We're alive, ergo, I wasn't trying to get us killed."

Morgan exhaled heavily, grateful to see their turn-off approaching. "Am I glad I didn't let _you_ drive," he muttered, feeling his shirt stuck to his back by a layer of cold sweat. "I'd have needed a clean pair of jockeys." There was a possibility that still might prove necessary, because for a moment there he'd _really_ thought they were going to be the cream filling in an RV-semi pileup.

To his disgust, Harker just laughed at him again. "The RV was always going to pull over, we had another few seconds." She waved a dismissive hand, settling back into her seat properly. "Loads of time."

He shot several furtive troubled glances across at her as they approached Quantico. He felt like he'd just been through a near-death ordeal, something that didn't happen all that often despite what he did for a living; and especially not in his own car while he was driving. His mouth was dry and the thudding of his heart reverberated through his ears. His balls were still somewhere up near his kidneys, having bolted north in fright.

Whereas Harker didn't seem affected by it _at all_. As if that kind of life-on-the-line experience was a frequent, and _recent_ occurrence. He'd seen something like it before, usually in UnSubs or former military personnel. A form of PTS, an addiction to risk and adrenaline that could override good sense, as all addictions could. You could get PTS just from extensive reading of distressing casualty reports, or so they said. Perhaps her job at the Pentagon had involved something like that?

"I'll help you watch Declan, otherwise you'll never sleep," said Harker as they shared an elevator up to the BAU. "I can probably manage up to three evenings a week without arousing suspicion."

"You don't have to do that," Morgan disputed, still in the dark about why it was so important to her. "I can manage.

"I'm sure you can, Agent Morgan," she replied easily. "But if you fall asleep on the job, we're all in trouble."

He couldn't argue with that. "Why do you always use my title?" he asked curiously instead. "It's not like I'm your supervisor."

The look he received in response came with a healthy dose of distain. "Respect. Think about it."

Morgan nodded. He didn't need to – it was the same reason Reid was introduced to outsiders as "Dr Reid". Her team felt like outsiders within the BAU, and addressed their colleagues accordingly. He held out his hand. "Hi, I'm Derek."

She looked a little startled, before placing her smaller hand in his. "Hi Derek, I'm Pip. Nice to meet you." She giggled. "Don't think that gives you an extension on your paperwork."

Morgan chuckled as they exited the elevator. He watched as Pip belittled Rossi and convincingly lied to him about her absence in one single sentence, then get on with her work as if she really had only been out for coffee and lost track of time. Given what he had only recently learned about her relationship with Gideon, so recently the lustre of surprise had yet to wear off, Morgan watched their interaction _very_ closely.

There was nothing immediate to indicate she had formed a bond with Rossi any deeper than respect for a co-worker, much as she had for everyone else. It was a thin veneer of respect in Rossi's case, the acid and scorn she used to spread around with such generosity all got aimed at him these days, whether he deserved it or not.

Morgan slunk back to his office to finish up the paperwork he was late with. Harker…no, _Pip_ was unusual, and he'd keep an eye on her. As useful as her skills were, the last thing the BAU needed was another loose cannon.


	4. JJ (II)

JJ (II)

 _ **Don't walk in front of me… I may not follow**. **Don't walk behind me… I may not lead**. **Walk beside me… just be my friend -** **Albert Camus**_

Pip slammed the door in Rossi's face and then sagged defeatedly against the doorframe. Suds dripped unheeded from her body onto the floor as her shoulders shook, whether from laughter or something else JJ couldn't immediately tell.

JJ approached her warily. She'd arrived with a pizza about half an hour previously, and presented Pip with the pie as if bestowing a great gift. A proper Chicago pizza, just the way Pip liked it, what could possibly go wrong? She'd opened the box with a flourish only for Pip to take one whiff of the pizza and turn an alarming shade of green. She'd bolted for the bathroom and then kicked the door closed behind her when JJ tried to follow. She'd been in there ever since, and only the sound of running water offered some reassurance that she'd decided to take a shower and wasn't still throwing up.

Rather than waste a perfectly good pepperoni & onion, even if it wasn't her first choice in toppings, JJ had made good inroads on the pizza by the time Rossi knocked on Pip's door. At first, she'd frozen, a bit unsure what to do. Should she answer the door, considering Pip was in the shower? Or would it be better to wait, to make Pip emerge from her retreat and face whoever was at the door?

Before an option had been chosen, Pip flew out of the bathroom, taking the decision away. Having told Rossi something he should have known already: that sneaking around the hotel and offering to spend the night wasn't a good idea, Pip seemed to deflate, like she'd been punctured. She leaned her head on the door and sighed, such a long exhale of sheer desolation that JJ felt tears prickle her eyes.

Pip flinched violently when JJ laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, still a little damp and chilling rapidly in the pumped air of the room. That said enough about her state of mind for JJ to start wondering if she'd bitten off more than she could chew.

"Didn't know you were still here," murmured Pip, casting her a vaguely apologetic glance and heading back into the bathroom. Her eyes were red-rimmed; she had been crying extensively in the safety of the shower with no one to see. "Sorry if you were worried. I'm fine. See you tomorrow."

The bathroom door closed firmly once more, leaving JJ standing there already planning. Pip was many hundreds if not thousands of miles away from being fine, and with Rossi sent packing, it fell to her to deal with it. Somehow. JJ grinned briefly. If Pip thought dismissing her and hiding in the bathroom until she left was going to work, she had another thing coming.

It took two phone calls, a minor bribe to the porter and some swift unpacking, but JJ was ready by the time Pip emerged from her self-imposed exile to the bathroom. The porter had been insufferable actually, winking and grinning at her; the bribe had been for him to keep his unsubtle insinuations to himself - he was so smug and assured that a simple tip would never have worked. He obviously thought the pair of them were having some sort of a clandestine lesbian love affair and that by bringing her bags down to Pip's room he was assisting in some great sneaky plan so they could have sex under their friends' noses.

Pip stopped dead as soon as she saw her. "It's a good job I didn't decide to waltz out here naked, isn't it?" she sneered. "Or were you hoping I would because this is this your backhanded way of propositioning me?"

JJ blushed. She couldn't help it not after the porter's allusions… "Of course not," she managed indignantly before seeing the brief flash of amusement in Pip's eyes. "You heard the porter, didn't you?" she asked ruefully.

Pip rolled her eyes. "Bit hard not to really." She dressed quickly and efficiently, leaving JJ to wonder how she managed to make getting pyjamas on under a towel look dignified. She looked JJ up and down, dressed in her sleepwear and feet already tucked under the quilt. "I don't need a babysitter," she huffed with considerable exasperation.

Recognising the prickly withdrawal for what it was, JJ stood and glared at her, hands on hips. "How about a friend?" she asked pointedly. "Seems like you've already scared off the only other person who offered."

Pip's eyes were shining again, but not with humour. She hadn't meant to put it quite like that, but Pip always had a knack for getting under her skin. JJ sighed. "It was a bad idea of his from the beginning, you and I both know that. I don't mean you've _actually_ scared him off. He cares too much about you to take the occasional barb from the sharper side of your tongue personally."

Pip turned away with a shrug. "I know."

Her disinterest would have been believable if JJ hadn't caught the brief flick of her eyes that sought visual confirmation of the words. She kept her expression open and neutral, knowing that what she'd said was completely true. Rossi knew better than to be offended or hurt by such a minor swipe, and Pip should know that too.

But things were different since they'd arrived in Chicago, although the personality shift had started before the team had even boarded the jet. Pip was quieter, dejected, practically submissive. Cho obviously couldn't stand her and while it was clear Pip didn't like him much either, his was a visceral reaction. Hatred that strong didn't bloom overnight or for no reason and Pip's reaction to returning to Chicago had been to shut down. Instead of the blazing fight JJ had expected when Cho started his campaign of sneering comments, Pip had just battened down the hatches to endure it. It didn't make any sense.

"Why does Cho hate you so much?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.

"Because I survived and so many others didn't," said Pip softly. "I always felt like he thought I hadn't tried hard enough, that because I was the first person who wasn't killed outright by their injuries that I should have done more. That was before I knew about his relationship with Hollis, somehow I'd figured she played for the other team." She shrugged. "I never saw them together, so I didn't pick up the signs I usually rely on for that kind of thing."

Pip sat down wearily on the end of the bed. "You're not going to leave, are you?" she asked resignedly.

JJ grinned. "Not a chance."

"Ok," said Pip calmly, and burst into tears.

Completely caught off guard, it took a moment for JJ to realise what had happened. Even when she was upset, Pip seemed to have almost iron control over her emotions and it seemed that persistence had broken through that control. She gathered Pip into her arms and let her have a good cry. Sometimes just letting it all out was exactly what was needed.

When Pip tapered off into sniffles, JJ shifted to reach for a tissue and mopped her puffy face dry, much as she'd do for Henry. "Better?" she asked. "The pizza's probably cold by now, but your half is still in there," she said gesturing vaguely to the box sat on the desk.

Pip swallowed heavily and didn't look in the direction she'd indicated. "That was one of our favourite restaurants," she whispered, her voice still roughened with emotion. "We used to eat there regularly, and they would even deliver to the office if we pulled an all-nighter."

JJ went cold, realising why Pip's reaction to the pizza had been so violent. Flooded with guilt, she tried to apologise; not that she could have known the blunder she was making with the pizza, but Pip waved off her concern. "I can get you something else?" she offered instead. "There's a buffet downstairs, I'm sure they'll have something you like?" They'd have some bacon, surely? If nothing else, bacon would encourage her to eat.

"Not hungry," muttered Pip to her knees, ruining yet another good idea.

"You want me to get rid of it?"

Pip looked away and nodded.

JJ threw her jacket on over the top of her PJ's and grabbed the box, with every intention of throwing it out. She caught a glimpse of Pip's face just before she turned away and stopped, thinking. "I'll just take this with me too," she murmured to herself, grabbing up the keycard to Pip's room. Pip snorted behind her and JJ grinned to herself. Without the key she couldn't get back in the room, and she had a feeling Pip wouldn't have let her in the door for a second time that night.

With the cold pizza disposed of, the pair of them settled into bed. JJ could feel herself dozing almost immediately but was aware that Pip was lying stiffly next to her like a board.

"You going to sleep ok?" she asked softly, already fairly sure she knew what the answer was.

"How does Will feel about you being back in the Bureau?" countered Pip, avoiding the question with far less subtlety than JJ was accustomed to.

"I think he preferred it while I was at the Pentagon," admitted JJ uncomfortably. It was quite bone of contention between the two of them actually. Will was convinced that she'd taken a step backwards by returning to the BAU, and made no secret of the fact that while he didn't mind the extended travelling of her previous role, the unpredictable nature of her movements was more of an issue since she left the Pentagon.

Trouble was, he didn't know what the job at the Pentagon had entailed, how hard it had been, mentally, to manage. He had no idea and she couldn't tell him. She couldn't go back to what she'd been doing even if she wanted to. Their contribution to the hunt for Bin Ladin was over and there was no way she'd be prepared to go back into something similar without Pip at her back.

Which lead her down another line of thought. She couldn't talk to Will about what she'd seen, what she'd done, but she could talk to Pip.

"He thinks I demoted myself by coming back to the BAU. He doesn't understand how the job affected me; how could he? He still still thinks I was just out of state when I was in Afghanistan with you. He has _no idea_ what I went through, and I can't tell him!" JJ warmed to her theme and sat up to make her point clearer. "He still doesn't know about the miscarriage and I don't think I can ever tell him. He got so paranoid about me being in the field when I was pregnant with Henry that learning I'd killed his baby by being blown up…well." She let her breath out in a sharp puff of annoyance. "I'd probably find myself chained to the bed or something."

"Whatever turns you on, babe," quipped Pip. "I've got a scarf in my bag if that will suffice for the evening?"

JJ laughed, brushing away the half-formed tears from her eyes. "I won't try and compete with Rossi, much as it breaks my heart."

They giggled together, and JJ immediately felt better. There was no quick solution for Will's dissatisfaction with her career path, but she had to hope that seeing her happy, back in the BAU with her friends like she belonged would make him happy too. Only time would tell.

"Cho's making me sit at his old desk," murmured Pip into the slightly awkward silence that developed.

That explained the mercurial emotions. It was a mean trick to play, to force Pip to sit at her old lover's desk. Cho's hatred of her ran deeper than JJ had appreciated.

"There's still this little dent from his signet ring," added Pip. "He had an argument with Ade and thumped the desk to make a point, nearly broke his fingers."

"You never talk about him," observed JJ, knowing better than to name the man they were talking about.

"You never talk about Roslyn," countered Pip.

JJ winced. The reminder of her sister still stung, despite the point she knew Pip was trying to make. She fiddled with the heart necklace Roz had given her just before she died, trying to regain her composure. She never took it off, preferring to keep her one remaining little piece of her beloved sister close, even while she slept.

"Sorry," muttered Pip. "I didn't mean…"

JJ rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. "I know you didn't. It's ok. I've blocked out a lot of it, I genuinely don't remember much about what happened. I know I froze for a good ten minutes when I found her, but apart from that…"

"It's all just a blur."

The two of them shared a sad smile. They had both been through the wringer of life, but somehow had come out the other side as strong independent women. Others in similar circumstances had turned UnSub or worse.

"I'm glad you're my friend, JJ," whispered Pip, as they lay back down to sleep.

JJ wrapped her arms around Pip, and let her snuggle into the hollow of her shoulder. "Likewise," she replied.


	5. Penny

_Penelope_

 _ **It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't - Abraham Lincoln**_

Penelope nibbled absently on the end of her pen. It was the purple one with a star on top, her favourite in times of deep thought because the shape meant she could worry the top edge with her teeth a little. Back and forth it went, as she turned over the facts as she knew them. Pip was lying to her. She was sure of it, but she didn't know what about. It was a mystery, and a fascinating one.

Pip had spent the weekend at a spa with some friends or so she said, after the team flew home from Chicago. Sunday night, she'd come over with a bottle and they'd spent the entire evening chatting and drinking wine; yet it felt like all the stories of her time outside the BAU were…a little _off_ somehow. Like all the relevant details had been changed, sanitised almost, for her consumption. There was a big lie behind that misdirection, she was convinced of it, and it had started long before Pip's transfer to the Pentagon.

One perfectly manicured red nail tapped thoughtfully on the edge of her keyboard. She could find out. She could mine the information, slip with ease through any defences in her path to find what she wanted. She was a hacker, and a good one. It wouldn't be too hard. It might even be fun.

She'd barely reached forward to start typing before she hesitated and then leaned back in her chair once more. The star found its way back into that little groove just behind her front teeth. If she got caught looking where she thought she might have to look, there'd be big trouble. Looking for Pip in secret files could land her back in that cell, away from her amazing crime-fighting family. Doing things like that in the heat of the moment chasing an UnSub was one thing, but doing it cold-bloodedly to satisfy her own curiosity was quite another. She didn't do blackhat anymore, she used her superpowers for _good_ , that was why she was in the BAU instead of jail. Although...she'd written a new program that would hide her tracks from all but the most determined…

Penelope flushed brilliantly even though she was all alone in her lair, as the frantically waving arms of her conscience finally caught her attention. Pip wouldn't want her looking. She knew that implicitly, and the fact that it had taken so long to recognise that felt incredibly shameful. Pip took her privacy incredibly seriously, something that was as intriguing as it was gratifying when she opened up and shared something personal.

Like Sunday night. Penelope fanned her heated face with a file grabbed at random from her desk as she cast her mind back. It was a little difficult, they'd had far more to drink than was really sensible when they both had to work the next day. Although it had to said, Pip could handle her alcohol far better than she could. Penelope only vaguely remembered being ushered to bed, but Pip had still been sensible enough before she left to set out the makings of some willow tea in anticipation of her hangover, and wash the dishes from their rather chaotic evening together.

She still didn't know who Pip's boyfriend was, but after Sunday night she knew for a _fact_ that he existed. She'd had an inkling before, because _somebody_ had obviously looked after Pip after Rossi got her shot in Alabama, and it hadn't been him or anyone in what Penelope had always called "the home team" - those members of the BAU who didn't travel with the profilers. Griffin had taken her home, but he hadn't stayed with her. She knew Pip had other friends both inside and outside the Bureau, including that unfortunately gay blonde who'd worked logistics desk for a while…

Her thoughts derailed for a moment…he really had been handsome, it was such a shame Mark was only interested in men, although his fiancé was also rather dishy. "Behave!" she muttered to herself. "You have a perfectly good boyfriend of your own."

She did. Kevin was lovely, but he wasn't... Penelope sighed. She was getting fed up of thinking about Kevin in that way: "lovely, but…". She'd explained it to Pip as the Penelope Garcia "Shoes" Theory of Men. In fact after a bottle of wine, she'd waxed lyrical on the subject, but Pip had been very patient with her. The way it went, was that every girl, whether they'd admit it or not, likes stilettos. They're sexy, they make you look fabulous and sometimes you just _have_ to have them. Men like that were _exciting_. But that excitement could be dangerous and came with risks, because stilettos would _always_ end up hurting you eventually.

And what did every girl do after a long day of tottering around in high heels? You kicked them off and comforted your poor feet with a pair of slippers, of course. Slippers that you loved, which were snuggly and dependable and wouldn't break your ankle if you miss-stepped a little. They were _safe_. But you couldn't keep them them on all the time, or potentially even leave the house wearing them.

The romantic ideal, obviously, was to find something in the middle. Something classy but comfortable that you wouldn't mind wearing all day, and multi-functional enough that they could be jazzed up with matching accessories for a big night out.

Kevin wasn't a pair of stilettos. Kevin wasn't even a vaguely interesting pair of boots. Kevin was the slippers, and they were boring and functional. Not a sequin in sight or even a pom-pom on the end to spice them up. They shared some interests, and the sex was usually worthwhile if a little vanilla for her taste, but nothing about their relationship was exciting. The initial burst of lust had faded and left her feeling wanting something more satisfying.

Pip had just absently told her to enjoy what she had, and moved Sergio off her lap so she could reach forward and open a second bottle of wine.

Penelope had immediately started to reel off a checklist of for and against: sex more or less when she wanted it, but it meant on her back with the lights off; he was good fun to go out with, if she get drag him away from his gaming; he understood her work and was good with code, but he didn't understand how tight-knit the BAU was; the fraternisation policies, although that was mostly an empty threat considering they didn't actually work together, for all that they were nominally in the same department…She'd barely started to warm to the subject before Pip started laughing.

It had taken a moment to pick up that her laughter was rueful, and directed internally. Like she'd had a similar kind of conversation with herself relatively recently about the merits or otherwise of a relationship. She had turned up to their evening looking a little ruffled and with a glow that could only be described as post-orgasmic, and the evidence finally added up. Garcia had barely been able to contain her squeal of excitement. Pip was _dating!_ It was about time!

Penelope knew what had happened to her in Chicago, what she'd lost, years before the team had been called back there by that horrible little sneak, Cho. Not long after joining the BAU, Pip had started coming to her grief counselling group. At first, she hadn't been able to work out how Pip knew about it, until she saw Gideon pick her up afterwards one evening. She never mentioned what she knew about Pip's past unless it was in group, you had to respect the confidential boundary of that otherwise what was the point of doing it? It was the basis of trust between all the members that made it work.

Pip had stopped coming to group, but not because she had dealt with what happened in Chicago. The anniversary of Ian's death was still a day to batten down the hatches, even the profilers had known to tread carefully around her in early May; although equally obviously none of them except Rossi had previously known why. Her absence from the weekly meetings had coincided with the arrival of Damon McGill on the horizon, something Penelope still had occasional bad dreams about. Damon had scared her, in a way she couldn't fathom at the time. Their very first meeting, she had felt her pulse starting to race and her stomach twisting in apprehension before they'd even been introduced. He'd felt very threatening, even with a carefree smile on his face.

Damon had been a classic example of stilettos. He was handsome, he was spontaneous and he was extravagant. But he'd also been a vicious bully and Penelope had watched with horror as Pip put up with whatever Damon threw her way for nearly two years. What had started with pinches and slaps had graduated to fists very quickly and Pip had just let him do it.

She'd eventually got rid of Damon, but had seemed to just linger afterwards, marking time. Amber and Mark had tried to coax her out of her dating shell to no avail, although they clearly hadn't a clue as to what she looked for in a guy. The stories Pip had told her! The Russian who had groped her after walking home, the financier who had turned out to be married, and even a politician who only wanted a date with a woman to put the press off the scent of a story that he was gay. Apparently, he'd even offered Pip a threesome with his secret boyfriend in exchange for her silence when she objected to what he was proposing.

Penelope's brain wandered off unsupervised once more. What would that be like, she wondered. The possibilities were intriguing, especially if both guys were attentive and knew their way around. To be the filling in a stud sandwich…her sex gave a hearty throb of of interest and she resolutely turned her mind away. No point fantasising over something that would never happen. Kevin would have an aneurysm if she suggested doing it in the _shower_ , let alone something so risqué as inviting another man into bed with them. Not to mention that for both men to be knowledgeable in the sack, neither of them would be Kevin in the first place.

Pip hadn't denied she was seeing someone, but had been quite clear that Penelope didn't know him and that his identity was something that would remain secret. Having only half the story was incredibly frustrating…she chomped down on the star hard enough to leave tooth marks, before smiling broadly. It didn't matter that Pip wouldn't tell her because _Rossi_ would know.

That had been quite a surprise at first, because they didn't look like friends to the uninitiated observer. The opposite if anything, because Pip seemed to save up all her vitriol for Rossi's benefit. But they were quite similar once you got under the surface, and both seemed to profit from their friendship - smoothing some of the rough edges off each other. Pip had done it with Gideon too, to a degree.

With that in mind, Penny had yielded when Pip asked her a few years previously to disable the location tracking software she'd written to track everyone's cell phones. It had been for her own peace of mind, considering all the awful things that had happened to their family; there had been times she woken in the night terrified something had happened to her friends. Being able to check they were all safe was the only thing that allowed her to get back to sleep again. Pip's need for privacy overruled her objections, and that conversation had come with the revelation that she was good friends with Rossi, and didn't want it misunderstood that their movements outside work often involved each other.

Rossi was easy to broadside into admitting something, all she had to do was dress a little more flamboyantly than usual and the distraction that provided was usually enough to get him to talk. Super Agent Italian Stallion he might be, but beneath that he was just a guy, and few guys could lie to her impressive cleavage. He was no exception.

Penelope glanced down. No cleavage today, at least not on display. She hadn't slept well, and had been in too much of a rush after sleeping through her alarm to do more than throw on a favourite dress and pin her hair up instead of washing it. Tomorrow, she decided. She'd interrogate Rossi tomorrow. He would know who Pip's mystery man was, there was no way he wouldn't, they spent so much time together…

She sat bolt upright as a possibility she hadn't seriously considered before suddenly presented itself. Could _he_ be…? She shook her head. No. She would have noticed if they were more than friends, and she liked to think Pip would have told her if _Rossi_ was the secret identity she didn't want made public. It would only be an extension of the clandestine friendship she knew about already, so where would be the harm in that?

She settled into her seat, leaning back a bit to gnaw properly on her pen. Rossi had been devastated by Emily's death, if he had been violating the fraternisation policies with _anyone_ , it was more likely to have been her. He'd been inconsolable when she died and had turned moody and uncooperative with everyone. He'd worked instead of dealing his grief, much as her darling Derek had done, but Rossi had spiralled rather than finding a new state of balance. He had pulled long hours, longer even than Hotch, coming in at weekends and during the holidays too. He'd been a complete mess until Pip had reappeared, fresh from her time in the bowels of the Pentagon to help him through his grief. Whatever it was he'd needed, she had obviously managed it because he was more or less back to his usual self; if not a little chirpier than before.

Would interrogating Rossi count as a violation of Pip's privacy? Probably. She sighed. There was no "probably" about it she realised, resigned to abandoning the idea. As soon as Rossi worked out that he'd been duped by the effect of her breasts, he'd confess to Pip what he'd let slip. The two of them were close enough that he'd _probably_ survive the thermonuclear detonation that would result, and then Pip would come storming into her lair armed with a disappointed expression that was far more upsetting than when she shouted.

The thing was, Penelope decided as she twirled the pen between her lips like a lollipop, was that the unknown boyfriend wasn't a lie as such, just an omission. The real lie was bigger, and the reason she couldn't see it for what it was, was because it covered _so_ many things. It was like Pip had a whole other life she didn't know about, and as someone who had made a slightly criminal career out of doing the same, albeit briefly and in cyberspace, Penelope knew she ought to have been quicker to see it. She could sympathise with the need to keep the past shrouded.

Shane Wyeth had been stilettos too and although he'd never hurt her physically, the scars were still there. Digging up that part of her life wouldn't be pleasant for anyone, and she had to wonder if Pip's paranoid fixation with secrecy stemmed from something similar.

Pip had spent years in foster care after losing both her parents young, same as she had. Foster homes often had little to no privacy and if you were unlucky, other kids that stole your stuff too. Pip had gone from there to the Marines, and she had to suppose there was probably even _less_ privacy in that sort of environment. It wouldn't take much, like a bad breakup, to turn that into an overwhelming urge to keep that part of yourself hidden, unknown by others. Logical, if a little sad.

At least, it would be if the secret boyfriend was the only thing. But it wasn't. That wasn't the headline in caps lock on the front page, it wasn't even the smaller one underneath. It was buried somewhere near the back, next to an ad for washing powder and a feel-good article about a stray cat. As fascinating as she found it, Penelope knew that wasn't the main event.

She sat forward and pulled her keyboard nearer. She was good at lists, cross-checking lists against other lists was what got the UnSubs caught, once the profilers told her what they were looking for. The world was at her fingertips and she turned it into one big pivot table to give them their answers. Maybe doing the same with the current mystery would help.

She sighed and pushed her keyboard aside again. If she used her babies, she'd end up getting carried away, the temptation would be too great. She'd end up actually testing her suppositions and get lost in the rabbit hole. She'd dig, and she'd feel sorry about it afterwards, but it wouldn't stop her. She was a hacker, and a hacker's gotta hack. Everyone had their addictions. It was better to use paper for this particular exercise.

What were the main questions, apart from the name of Pip's new man? The star on the end of her pen bobbed and weaved as she wrote.

 _When did it all start?_

 _What changed recently to make it more obvious?_

Penelope pondered the two things she'd written. She needed to be careful, writing things down was a good way for Pip to catch her in the act of ferreting out information she'd been told wasn't her business. She'd shred it once she was done, but that didn't stop her doodling in the corner. Like the pen-chewing, it helped her to think.

How would she find out when it all started, without knowing what she was looking for?

The mirror-reflection of an abstract 3D shape she'd drawn gave her the answer. She needed to look at it the other way around. Finding the _what_ would give her the _when_.

What had thrown Pip's tales into sharp relief? Her absence from the BAU. Perhaps there was something about her job in the Pentagon? National security? Something she _couldn't_ talk about? Pip's work in the Pentagon _might_ have been highly classified, but it seemed unlikely. According to her transfer orders, she was supposed to have been JJ's admin support. It was conceivable that had been a mis-direct, a handy way to explain it given that JJ's transfer had already been assured by then, but it seemed a bit over-the-top.

There was an easy way to check, of course. She cast a distrustful look at her monitor before surrendering to the inevitable and grabbing the keyboard. She'd pull Pip's job history, and that was it. Just to give herself a timeline to work with.

It wasn't quite what she'd expected.

Pip's current status was no surprise: BAU AST Lead, reporting to Rossi in Hotch's absence, but her pay bracket meant she was still technically an active field agent. That was interesting, but not entirely unexpected given the requirements of her post. Her recent time in the Pentagon was no surprise either, Administration Officer to the Defence Department Media Liaison, which had been JJ's title. She'd known that already. Her employer was noted down as being the State Department, but apparently, that was just the way the Pentagon liked to do things - it took all of three seconds to confirm that discrepancy was in JJ's record too. Penelope rolled her eyes. Bureaucracy at its finest.

Pip's time as part of the FBI before she joined the BAU was known to her as well, although she hadn't been aware Pip had extensive eskrima skills in addition to her proficiency with guns. She'd even won awards. Why would she keep that quiet? Penelope stalled for a moment, pondering that. If it had been her, she'd have them mounted on the wall in her lair for everyone to see. Pip hadn't told _anyone_.

She kept reading. It was the entry before Pip joined the Bureau that really caught her attention, because the dates didn't tally with her knowledge. She'd been under the impression that Pip had joined the Bureau straight from a long service in the Marines. She hadn't. She'd worked for the State Department before, as a Language Analyst. She had only served a five year hitch in the military as a sharpshooter before putting down her weapon and using her language skills instead. What had made Pip pick up the gun again and join the Bureau, she wondered.

Penelope leaned back in her chair. Pip had worked at the Pentagon before, perhaps translating intelligence briefings or wire-tap recordings. Potentially highly-classified information. That would account for all the name and place changes she suspected in the anecdotes Pip shared. It was almost disappointing how easily explained it all was.

But…knowing Pip as she did, Penelope would put good money on the secret identity of the boyfriend being related in some way. Pip always hid secrets within secrets. You were supposed to stop smugly after you found the first one, leaving the rest safe. Pip held the only key to a single undeniable form of control: the power to allow others to _know her_. Or not.

For someone who wore her soul through her wardrobe for the world to see, Penelope found the whole concept exhausting. How would you keep track of it all? If you told one person something and not someone else, how did you juggle it when they met? How could you possibly decide on that sort of scale what to tell and what to withhold, with _each and every single person_ , and not trip up? It was giving her a headache just thinking about it.

Back to the boyfriend. Perhaps he'd been a coworker? Some intelligence asset, maybe? Someone she shouldn't have been seeing, necessitating secrecy. Long hours pouring over a recording together in a sound-proofed room, all alone…

She squeezed her legs together to ease the ache between her thighs. Yes, quite. Damn her overactive imagination.

Further thought was interrupted by a case, although from the quick email Pip had sent her, it was one Rossi had picked up himself. Penelope grabbed her tablet. If it wasn't one of the recent requests she'd passed on, she'd need to take notes.

* * *

She tottered back to her lair, mind whirling. The pictures had been icky, but then they always were. Some super-duper analyst type in the Pentagon had been tortured for information and then shot in the head. Lots and lots of blood all over everything, followed by brains on the wall. Nasty. However, not only did she have _permission_ to look at his computers, she was allowed to widen her search if necessary. Who knows what she might…happen to run across?

But despite the enormity of the opportunity that had presented itself, the chaos in her thoughts wasn't anything to do with the case, oh no. It was the General that had asked for their help. Julio Perez.

Tall, imposing, and rather good-looking, for an older guy. He obviously worked in a highly classified department because she'd got nowhere with a basic inquiry into him on her tablet as she stood in the conference room, watching as the profilers got more and more frustrated with him. He cut Rossi off several times, denied them access to certain information, then all but gave her permission to hack the _Department of Defence_. Just who was he, to be able to do that?

 _Vintage_ stilettos, no less.

She'd escorted him to the elevator as he left and they'd run into Pip on their way. She hadn't missed the adoring looks the General had cast in Pip's direction, and it had been clear that Pip was only pretending that they'd never met. She'd been fidgety, fiddling with something on a chain around her neck.

What was it Derek had told her about body language and subconscious gestures? She was willing to bet the apple pendant Pip had unintentionally drawn attention to had been from her lover. Unconsciously, she'd reached for the pendant when she saw Perez. The General was clearly besotted. Which meant…

 _He_ was Pip's secret, it was _him_ that required the privacy, not Pip. Somehow that was even more worrying, if she was right about the kind of man he was. If they'd met while she was at the State Department, where did that leave Ian? Perhaps it was more of an on-off thing. Although from the look on Perez's face, it was definitely "on" as far as he was concerned.

Penelope's nails clattered cheerfully over her keyboard as she trawled through records looking for what her profilers had asked for. Her mind however, was focussed elsewhere.


	6. Hotch

_Hotch_

 _ **Any fool can know. The point is to understand - Albert Einstein**_

Hotch didn't look up as his office door opened and closed quietly. "Dave, I'm not really in the mood."

"Good job he's gone home then, isn't it?"

Hotch looked up, surprised by the identity of his visitor. It certainly wasn't the person he'd _expected_ to slip into his office that evening, in spite of the clear message his closed door sent. "Harker? What are you doing here?" he asked, unable to stop himself.

She brazenly settled herself in front of his desk like she belonged there; dropping her bag by her feet, and setting a pair of cut-glass tumblers and the bottle he recognised from Dave's bottom drawer on the desk between them.

"Figured you could use some company," said Harker, spinning the cap off the bottle and pouring them both a generous shot. She raised her glass to him and sat waiting for him to reciprocate.

The muscles across the back of Hotch's shoulders tensed, tightening even further than they had been already. Much more and he'd start twanging like a badly tuned cello. He'd closed his door for a reason, unwilling to socialise with anyone. Although the scotch would be welcome, he couldn't deny that. Hadn't he been contemplating his own bottle of the stuff, barely five minutes previously? Jack was with Jess until the weekend, and a little alcohol would sooth the burn of rejection he still felt in his chest, even two days after the event.

"I don't want to talk about it," he said sternly, and reached for the drink she pushed in his direction. They touched glasses, the chime more muted than if they'd been drinking from crystal.

"Good," replied Harker lightly, smiling when he took a mouthful. "You're going to listen."

Hotch inhaled in astonishment, then coughed as the whisky went down the wrong way. Harker's smile just broadened, as if she'd enjoyed wrong-footing him. On reflection, as he tried to clear his throat, Hotch decided she most certainly had.

"Harker…" he started warily, once he'd regained his composure. If she was going to lecture him…

"Pip," she boldly interrupted. "Let's agree that here and now, for one night only, you're neither Unit Chief or my immediate superior. I'd be _at least_ your equal if I hadn't left field work behind." She shrugged and gave him a rueful smile. "Even if that's somewhat debatable these days. Call me Pip."

Hotch considered her carefully over the rim of his glass, a little put-out at how commanding she sounded. He was used to that tone being used on others, but she rarely did it with him. "How many times have I told you to call me Hotch?" he countered, trying to regain a little control. "Hardly seems fair."

"This evening, Hotch, you're not the boss."

That time, he'd waited for her to finish speaking before taking another sip, so was able to control his surprise a little better. Most people stumbled over using a familiarity for the first time. She just rolled it of the tongue like she'd known him her whole life, no indication she had only ever called him "Agent Hotchner" or "sir" the entire time they'd known each other. Hotch realised that actually, he really didn't know this woman at all, despite how long they'd worked together. Harker… _Pip_ just grinned at him, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

"Fine," he agreed. "No chain of command. So, what is it you want to tell me, Pip?" Hotch asked, pleased he'd managed her nickname with as little trouble as she'd had with his. "I've already said I don't want to…"

"I'm not going to talk about you, I'm going to talk about _me_ ," stated Pip, interrupting him once more.

"What?" That certainly wasn't what he'd anticipated, though he had to admit, he was curious. "Why?" he asked, intrigue overpowering annoyance at her interruption.

"I want to tell you a story," she replied. "A true story. You know parts of it already, I think, but it's relevant to the situation at hand, so I'm going to colour it in around the edges a little expressly for your benefit. Perhaps, you might hear something that…resonates for you. These are my terms: that you and I will be completely honest with each other this evening, no matter how hard that is, or how much we don't like what we hear; and that any details we learn about each other will be taken to our graves, having been discussed with nobody."

Pip finished her little speech and just sat there, waiting for him to agree. Or not. Hotch had a feeling that despite what she'd said about him not being her superior for the evening, she'd still abide by his wishes if he told her to leave him alone.

But he didn't _really_ want to be alone, despite closing his door, and the opportunity to learn more about her was too good a chance to pass up; even if it meant he had to give away a little of his closely-guarded privacy in the process. She'd said he might hear something that helped him, too, although he couldn't quite see how that was possible. Still, it had to be worth a try, and Pip had brought Dave's open bottle of scotch. A drink or two with her wouldn't hurt and was better than moping about in his office brooding by himself, certainly.

The decision was made easier by way she'd phrased the offer; she'd struck a chord, intentionally or otherwise. Pip's words had echoes of two other people, two important people in his life: Hayley, and after her death, Dave. Both had promised similar truthfulness, although Hayley had volunteered, and Dave had done so after being asked. Or was that begged? Hotch couldn't remember much about that night, everything smothered with an overwhelming sense of despair and for some reason, a lingering impression of his friend's aftershave.

Curiosity won against caution. Hotch nodded. "Alright, I agree."

Pip jutted her chin briefly in his direction. "Lose the tie."

"I beg your pardon?" he spluttered, utterly confused.

"You look too much like my boss," she said with a cheeky smile, and took a hearty mouthful of her whisky.

Despite the mood he'd been in before, Hotch huffed once in amusement. He'd seen her do the same for Dave, on many occasions, using humour to lighten the weight of what they saw every day at work. No matter what, somehow, she could always make him laugh. It had mellowed his old friend, the fiery temper and tendency towards self-recrimination still present, but much more under control than they ever had been.

He did as she asked, standing briefly to shed his suit jacket and undoing the top couple of buttons on his shirt to loosen the collar as well. He held out his hands. "Better?" he asked a little sarcastically, as he took his seat again.

"Much." Pip smiled and leaned back casually in her seat. "Once upon a time, in a city not too far away, there was a young girl fighting for a chance to escape her upbringing," she began.

Hotch raised an eyebrow. "Talking about yourself in the third person is never a good sign," he said teasingly, pleased when her saw her eyes flash with mirth. "Just saying."

"You want to hear this or not?" she asked tartly, the smile taking the sting from her words. "It's easier to tell if I pretend it's not about me," she muttered, the smile fading.

Hotch just waved an encouraging hand and leaned back in his seat to listen. He _definitely_ wanted to hear it, and if that meant her telling it objectively as an outside observer, then so be it.

"Orphaned fairly young, she got good grades, but had few friends," said Pip. "Life wasn't easy. She got shunted from foster-family to foster-family, none of them able to cope with her temper or overly-smart mouth for very long. Some of them tried to control her with kindness. Others…not so much."

She raised an eyebrow in his direction and Hotch felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He knew what she was saying. How could he not? He wondered how much of what she'd just implied she'd told Dave. Not all of it, he was willing to bet.

"I understand what that's like," he muttered, feeling a kind of solidarity with her. Not every beaten kid turned bad, they were both evidence of that. "My father," he admitted in response to her questioning look, already bitterly regretting his agreement to absolute honesty. It wasn't something he'd ever talked about, even with Hayley.

Pip nodded and touched her glass with his. They both drank, and sat silently for a moment, digesting what each had just learned of the other.

"She managed to get herself a degree, against the odds, and once a woman grown, joined up to serve her country," said Pip eventually, resuming her storytelling.

Gone was the brisk confidence Hotch was used to. Pip's words came slowly, deliberately. As if each were weighed before being spoken. He wondered again how much of it Dave knew, while also relieved they weren't going to delve into the details of their respective childhoods. Some things were better off left buried.

"Anything to get away from where she'd been," she continued. "She went hoping to find a sense of self-worth, she didn't realise until years later that she'd just swapped one kind of violence for another. As a marine, she did two long back-to-back tours in a war zone, earning herself two battlefield commissions and a Bronze Star, not that she'd be able to lay her hands on it if asked. It's in some drawer or other, I'm sure," she added dismissively. "At the end of her second tour of hell, she was approached by someone, someone who spoke with a silver tongue, promising her the earth. Young and naïve, she accepted the offer that was made and joined the CIA, thinking she would be helping to make the world a better place."

Pip gave him a rueful smile and a shrug. "She was bright, but not particularly good at seeing when someone was taking advantage of her, despite her experiences in the foster care system. She believed the lies she was told and did everything she was asked, not realising how profound an impact she was making on the shape of things to come. Nor did she see how accepting the offer in the first place had made her beholden to someone, someone who would always collect their due."

Pip swirled her whisky around in the tumbler. "She was an idealist," she said to her drink, "the jaded cynicism took years of hard knocks to develop." She glanced up at him. "You know how that goes."

Hotch knew, and he nodded. "Yeah."

Pip took a swallow before resuming her informative tale. "When it all went dreadfully wrong and innocent people died for one of her mistakes, she quit, walked away wracked with guilt over something she couldn't have done a damn thing about. She joined a different federal agency in the hope of redemption and for a little while, it looked like it might be possible. She was good at what she did, after all. She made some friends, even found love, in the shape of an ATF agent called Ian. Life in the FBI seemed good, and it looked like she'd finally found her place, if not peace. Three…for three…"

She stopped, tried to speak and shook her head. Pip swallowed heavily, several times. "Oh, this is harder than I expected," she breathed, looking up and blinking rapidly to try and stem the tears Hotch could see building.

Hotch sat forward. "Pip, you don't have to," he said, concerned. She'd offered the story for a reason, but her getting so upset over it surely wasn't worth any instruction she hoped he might gain.

Pip sniffed inelegantly and shook her head. "No…I think I do," she insisted, flapping a hand in his direction. "Just…just give me a minute."

"Take your time," Hotch reassured her and leaned back in his seat, swivelling round to look out the window to give her some semblance of privacy to pull herself together. Through the window, he could see the running lights of an aircraft high in the sky and idly tracked its progress as he waited. It had almost completed the final turn that would take it out of his view by the time Pip muttered something that sounded like "let's do this", from the other side of his desk. Hotch turned back to her. Pip's eyes were a little reddened, but she had almost completely composed herself. Possibly with help from the contents of her tumbler, the level of which was considerably lower than when he'd last seen it.

"You ok?" he asked, unsure if he really wanted her to continue if it had affected her so much.

Pip nodded and tipped up her drink to finish it. She took a deep breath and let it out. "She was FBI, he was ATF. They were rarely in the same city, both of them were part of teams that roamed the country, not fixed to a base. They were an unlikely pairing, but it worked, they complemented each other in some strange way. They had nearly three years together, before pure chance meant they ended up working as part of the same task force in Chicago. One cloudless day," her breathing hitched, "her birthday in fact, bad intel made her world fall apart all over again. She lost her lover, to the same hail of bullets that nearly killed _her_ , as well as the rest of their team. She woke up in hospital three days later to be told he was gone, as was the baby they'd made together and all of her closest friends."

Pip gave him a thin, bitter smile that made the tears standing in her eyes once more roll down her face, leaving twin trails on her cheeks. "Then they presented her with the engagement ring he'd not had a chance to give her and told her time would heal all wounds - as if her birthday would ever be anything but a reminder of the most horrific day of her life, every year, until the day she died."

"Ah, hell," whispered Hotch. "Pip, that's…I'm so sorry," he said, knowing no words he could find would help. Nothing anyone had said when Hayley died had helped either, and they both knew the standard phrase "I'm sorry for your loss" that got trotted out to victim's families, really _was_ as empty it sounded.

Pip shrugged and wiped her eyes, obviously aware of the shock value of what she'd divulged. He'd known she had been shot, it was in her file. The nerve damage to her right shoulder was the reason she was no longer in the field, even if that was somewhat of a murky grey area following her return to the Bureau. Dave had capitalised on the availability of her skills during the summer, occasionally drafting her into the team when the lack of agents made it necessary.

The rest of it, though…Hotch drained his tumbler in two short swallows. No wonder she'd needed a moment, after hearing it, he did too. The circumstances were different, but he could hear the echoes of the way he'd lost Hayley in what she'd been through.

As the whisky slid down, leaving a trail of heat in its wake, he wondered if she still had the ring her dead ATF agent had been planning to give her. Her eyes skittered away from his when he tried to catch her gaze, and her hands were clamped together as if to resist reaching for something. Yes, she still had it, and not on a shelf at home, either. If it wasn't in one her pockets, he'd eat his briefcase, contents and all.

"Losing someone you love to mindless violence is a unique pain, isn't it?" asked Pip. It was rhetorical, but Hotch nodded anyway. It was something else they had in common. He was starting to see why she thought he needed to hear some of the details of her life.

"One you can't explain to someone else if they haven't been there, done that and got their own version of the t-shirt," he commented.

They exchanged mutual wry smiles of acknowledgement, and Hotch was struck by the realisation that while he still knew relatively little about her, Pip already understood him on a dangerously deep level. She knew what it was like, she knew _exactly_ how he felt.

"Precisely," she agreed, "but it's what happens _after_ that really changes you. You harden yourself, convince yourself that the only way to avoid feeling that pain again is to avoid being in a position like that in the first place. To not get too close, not let yourself be that vulnerable ever again." She cocked her head. "It's a good theory, but real life doesn't work that way, does it?"

Hotch shook his head before he could stop himself. No, it didn't. He hadn't planned to fall in love again, and certainly not so soon after Hayley's death. He hadn't courted it, it had just happened, in between friendly drinks after work and quiet conversations in the car while out on a case. He'd simply turned around one day and caught himself in the middle of imagining what spending the rest of his life with Emily might be like. From the knowing tone, the same thing had happened to Pip, with Dave. Another similarity they shared.

Pip refilled their tumblers before continuing, the measure a fair sight larger than the last. "The loss of her field career came a little later, when it became clear she would never be able to shoot properly with her right hand again. A man came to her when she was at rock bottom, weak and helpless as a new-born kitten and cussing a blue streak at her physical therapist. He knew what she'd been before and offered her a new home in the BAU, a chance for a new start." She twirled her glass in the air, an airy gesture that somehow spoke of the utter bleakness of that time. "It wasn't like she anything else left to lose, so she accepted." She sighed, taking a mouthful to stall for time. Hotch let her have it, content to let her tell it at her own pace while he just kept quiet and listened.

"It was a _long_ road to recovery," she said, "even after she made it to the BAU. She suffered pain, drug addiction. Grief, self-loathing. Loneliness. She was an utter bitch to her new colleagues, taking her own misery out on others by being as difficult as possible."

Hotch remembered what she'd been like when Gideon had brought her into the fold. "Difficult" didn't even _start_ to describe her back then. He nodded, then stopped himself when her eyes narrowed. "Was I not supposed to agree?" he murmured with a flicker of a smile. "I learned long ago not to contradict you when you're right."

Pip let out a single bark of rueful laughter. "Possibly not quite so swiftly, at least," she replied sternly.

The alcohol turned the sternness into something more like the teasing he enjoyed with Dave. Hotch had to smirk, just because the two of them, Pip and Dave, were so well-suited. How had he not seen that before? Their rather odd argumentative friendship, something he'd stumbled onto quite by accident, had been full-grown by time he knew about it.

Even though he had tried to project an air of all-knowing when questioning Dave, that evening they'd flown home from Colorado had been the first time he'd seen how close they had become. He'd never known what had sparked it, although Hotch had always suspected that Dave had been the primary instigator, just because Pip was a good-looking woman and Dave still had two working eyes and a pulse. In the past, his friend had all too often done his thinking with the brain in his pants rather than the one in his head, and Hotch didn't think Dave had changed all _that_ much over the years. Regardless of how it started, once you knew _her_ , it was easy to understand how it had developed. They were two sides of the same coin, prickly sarcasm included.

"I'll try and remember that," he said with a smile, punctuating his comment with a deep mouthful from his glass. He savoured it, rolling it around his tongue before swallowing. Damn, that stuff was good. Much better than the bottle he had filed under W in the cabinet behind him. It would be far too easy to drink more of it than he should.

Pip huffed at him in gentle amusement. "Anyway, as horrible as she was to the people around her, she was being useful, something she'd always strived for, even as a child. For a little while, that was enough. Eventually, she made friends, grew to love her new job, the team around her. Unable to have children of her own as a result of the shooting, she took her team under her wing, nurturing and guiding them as if they were her own."

He'd known about the injuries she'd sustained as a result of the disastrous op in Chicago, but had somehow missed the loss of her ability to bear children. Hotch remembered a conversation with Dave, before the two of them had got together. He'd asked Dave if Pip was pregnant; the shock on Dave's face hadn't made sense at the time but certainly did so after that disclosure. He'd also seen the way she showered her team with love and loyalty, and received the same in return, but had never thought that much about why. Knowing changed his understanding of her – she was far more complicated than she appeared.

"She kept some of the attitude," smirked Pip, "but the worst of the rough edges got worn away. But always in the back of her mind, was the life she'd left behind. The skeletons in the closet that even now, still rattle in her dreams." Pip snorted and rolled her eyes. "Closet?" she muttered. "More like a fucking ossuary." She gave him a lopsided shrug as if asking him to dismiss that, and went on.

"About three and a half years after joining the BAU, she made a new friend. With one thing and another that life threw at them, he became a really good friend, one she could rely on. A friend she trusted, when trust was still something she struggled with; someone who made her feel safe, when that had been missing for so long. Someone who _understood_ her, as well as her rather peculiar sense of humour. A friend closer than many would believe, close enough to see and know _her_ , rather than the face she presented to the world. They told each other nearly everything and were both better for it. Each became the other's armour against the darkness we see here every day, the shoulder to turn to when things got rough. Even if there was nothing they could do about it except keep pouring the drinks. They laughed together, and they cried together, and caused each other some _monster_ hangovers."

Hotch snorted softly, a smile finally breaking free. He'd seen the aftermath of some of those late nights. Pip returned the smile, hers a little rueful as if she were remembering the same thing.

"She revelled in it, having a friend like that," she said. "Years went by, and she started to wonder about how close they had become. Where they were going, whether there was a possibility of something more, or if she'd misinterpreted him, because as far as she could tell, he'd never made it obvious."

Hotch quirked a sceptical eyebrow but said nothing. He'd seen Dave was in love with her probably before even _Dave_ had realised it. Their conversation the other day echoed in his head. Perceptive in matters of the heart, but only for others; somehow she was hopeless at seeing those same things for herself. The knowledge of what Dave had hidden in his top drawer edged into his consciousness, like an unwelcome visitor knocking at the door.

Pip shrugged, but otherwise ignored his disbelief. "There was a party, a charity dinner, and she dressed up for him. It was going well, and she was almost sure he wouldn't say no if she offered, when life threw them another curveball. A constant thorn in their side, was their Section Chief. They made life difficult for everyone, but particularly seemed to have it in for the two friends for some reason. They were at the party too, and in the heat of the moment, the woman impulsively weaved a web intended to mislead. To help cover anything that might happen between the two friends. She ensnared herself instead, her superior using it to try and dismiss her for sleeping with a subordinate."

"What?" exclaimed Hotch, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his desk. "When? I never knew anything about this!"

"I told Strauss the absolute truth but phrased it in such a way that she thought the opposite was true. She thought I told her I was gay."

"Actually, I remember Dave telling something me about that," admitted Hotch. "We were in Alaska and he told me you'd worked out how to stop him snoring." He tilted his glass in her direction. "Thank you for that, by the way, he sounds like a blocked drain when he's asleep." That was an exaggeration, but not a huge one.

Pip returned the gesture and smiled. "Can't believe you never mentioned it him, it's not like you haven't shared a twin before, or even a double bed if we can't get enough rooms for everyone."

Hotch snorted. "Always too busy with the case. I tend to get a bit…focussed when we're on a field trip. How did that bit of deception lead to an attempt at dismissal? One I knew nothing of, I might add, I would have fought it tooth and nail." Hotch paused, wondering if he ought to voice the thought, before doing so anyway. "If Strauss was gunning for you, I would have thought it would be about Dave." He'd misunderstood their friendship too, for a while.

Pip's mouth twisted. "I thought it was, when she started. She kept circling the subject, like she was embarrassed. Eventually, I had enough and left politely." She gave him a half-smile. "Well, politely for me at any rate."

Hotch snorted. He'd been on the end of that kind of politeness a couple of times. Somehow Pip had the ability to make even the highest courtesy sound like an insult, but often subtly enough that one didn't realise until it was far too late to call her out on it.

"Bloody woman followed me all the way back to Dave's office," Pip added. Hotch could see where it was leading, he and Dave had heard part of that argument through the wall. "She insisted on continuing the conversation. Eventually, she dragged out a photo of Amber, you remember her? Amber Rishi? She held the finance desk for about five years."

"Yes, hard worker," commented Hotch after some thought. "Bit more confident than Griffin. I wasn't entirely surprised when she finally made the jump from admin support to agent."

"Me either." Pip shrugged. "Griffin's getting there. He knows his numbers, he's just a bit too bright for his own good. He graduated young, so it's not like he's had the same amount of time as we've had, to figure out the world isn't the way you hope when you're a kid."

Hotch nodded. Fair point. "I bet living in the same house as the boss came as a bit of a shock," he said with a flicker of a smile. "I notice he's always on time these days."

"He's not very good at mornings," she agreed with a laugh, "but now he has an obnoxious yapping excuse for a dog to look out for and he's often up before I am. Dreadful little thing, all watery eyes and breath like a flamethrower. If I'd known it would make him more organised, I would have bought him a pet a long time ago."

They exchanged a rueful glance. Pip was obviously thinking the same thing as him, Hotch realised. Which was variations on a theme of "kids these days". When had he got old enough for _that_ to start? He was still in the prime of his life…right?

"The photo was of Amber on her Academy graduation day," said Pip. "One of her classmates took it, I'd never seen it before. It was Amber in full dress, just as I planted a huge smacker of a congratulatory kiss on her cheek. Strauss took that as confirmation that I'd seduced a member of my team, taken advantage of my position. When I asked her where she'd got the picture, she said it was amongst Amber's belongings and that it had been sent back to Quantico among other things when she died. Someone on the post desk gave it to Strauss, thinking it would get passed to me."

"Rishi's dead?" The shocks just kept coming, didn't they? Hotch exhaled heavily. "I never knew."

Pip grimaced. "Me either, until that rather backhanded and insulting notification. Nobody thought to tell us, the admin guys, about an agent's death. Why would they? It was an accident, by the way, not in the field. Highway crash." Pip shrugged. "Just bad luck, but at least it was quick. It wasn't unusual for my emails to Amber to go unanswered for a couple of weeks, so the fact that I'd not had a reply to my last one hadn't worried me. She was doing well in Missing Persons, but always busy." She huffed. "I told Strauss _exactly_ what she could do with her plastic sympathy couched as a fraternisation accusation."

"I bet you did," muttered Hotch into his tumbler, as if he hadn't heard at least part of it.

Pip took a sip and absently ran her finger round the lip of the glass. "I explained a few home truths to her about the nature of my previous employment and that I knew some things about her she'd rather I didn't. We've been at an uneasy stand-off ever since. Occasionally one side or the other will give a little ground, but back and forth we go, still walking the line I drew eighteen months ago."

"That's why you didn't rise to the subject when I mentioned her being difficult the other day," sighed Hotch, understanding flooding in. He narrowed his eyes. "You've got something on her."

"Many things," agreed Pip, "but only one that's pressing right now. I see, but I don't tell, not unless I _absolutely_ have to. If everyone thought they had to stop what they were doing or saying every time I turn up with more paperwork, I'd never get it all done." She shrugged again. It was a gesture Hotch truly hated, but somehow Pip made it expressive, a part of the way she spoke. Like the profanity, which she was obviously making an effort to limit for his benefit.

"I see, and I hear," she said. "I know things about a lot of people they'd probably rather not realise I do. I knew you were in love before you did, for example. Strauss..." Pip frowned. "I don't want to use it against her, she needs help, not leveraging."

"You've seen it?" Hotch only had his suspicions, nothing concrete.

Pip shook her head. "I'm an addict. I will always be an addict, even if I never touch another pill in my life. That's the nature of addiction. I don't have to see the particular vice to recognise one of the tribe."

Confirmation without actually saying it. She could talk in circles and half-truths with the best of them. Hotch sighed. She didn't have any hard evidence either. Pip was in the same boat as he was.

"I think she's got a drinking problem," he said, leaning back in his seat. "Just…the way she is sometimes. The way she speaks, her temper. Dave mentioned after Morgan's interrogation of Doyle that he thought could smell booze on her breath. I keep thinking she must have her reasons…"

"Addicts don't need a reason, just an excuse," murmured Pip. "And we're good at hiding. Did you know I was on drugs the first year I was running AST?"

Hotch shook his head. He'd assumed the dark storm cloud that had been perpetually hanging over her had been pain, she'd even walked with a cane for almost the entirety of that year.

"I can throw her a lifeline. Whether she takes it or not is another matter," said Pip slowly. "It's not the same circles as I move in, but there's some inevitable overlap with my bunch and the traditionalists."

Which Hotch took to mean Alcoholics Anonymous. He nodded gratefully. Strauss was becoming erratic, and the drama of the fallout if she did something _really_ stupid would be worse than any possible leaks from within a notoriously tight-lipped organisation. As risk assessments went, it was a no-brainer. He'd trust AA over Strauss' deteriorating judgement in a heartbeat.

"Keep watching," added Pip. "Nobody stops because they're told to. You have to _want_ _to_ before it'll stick. Watch, and eventually, she'll ask for help, even if she doesn't realise it at the time."

"Who helped you?" He had to ask, because it certainly hadn't been him.

Pip smiled briefly. "Gideon. He'd seen me all sewn up and full of holes, he knew why I'd started. He convinced me that it could also be the reason to stop. That numbing everything wasn't going to bring Ian back. He had a friend, they introduced me to the local chapter of Narcotics Anonymous and the rest is history." The smile faded, and she averted her eyes. "I never did subscribe to the whole 12 Steps thing, but it pointed me in the direction of my higher power." Pip flushed a little, something Hotch didn't understand. Having faith, being strong enough to _have_ a faith all while dealing with everything the BAU could throw at you, was a gift. Nothing to be ashamed of.

"I don't want to talk about Gideon," she whispered to her drink. "Is that ok?"

Despite their agreement to honesty, Pip asked to leave that part of her story out. Because it still hurt, another wound that hadn't healed, like Ian. Hotch could see that clearly. He nodded. He didn't want to talk about Gideon either. Some things should be left undisturbed, even after so long. Gideon's abandonment of them, of Reid, was something he was still angry about. Apparently, Gideon had also been close to Pip, something he hadn't known. The manner of his departure obviously still bothered her in the same way it did Reid, and it made Hotch angry all over again. Best not to rip the scab off that this evening.

Pip leaned back in her seat. "So, where were we? Oh, yes, the dinner and the subsequent death notification of a girl the woman considered a daughter. She flew to San Francisco to visit the grave with the original members of her team, to say their goodbyes together. The night she flew home, her previous life reared its ugly head once more, the skeletons reanimating and removing all her choices. She was ordered to take up her Company designation again and to report to the Middle East, right into the middle of something incredibly dangerous. With no warning or explanation, she had to leave her friend, her job, her life."

Pip paused and gave him a significant look. "And her boss," she added slowly, eyes still fixed on him, "a man she always looked up to, a man she admires greatly and would do _anything_ for. She never got to say that before she left, or that she was sorry for abandoning her post, even if it was against her will."

She fell silent, letting him think about that for a moment. Dave had already given him a highly edited version of that part; Pip had glossed over some of the salient points Dave had mentioned, presumably with that in mind. The bits she _had_ told him, however, filled in some of the larger gaps. He'd guessed, from the stridently-worded reinstatement orders he'd been presented with, that she'd been off doing something highly classified and compartmented. He hadn't known where or for whom. Having been given a little more detail, the manner of both her departure and subsequent return made sense.

Dave had also said years before that she held him in high regard, but it was one thing to hear that as an off-hand comment from an old friend, and quite another to hear it from her directly. It was incredibly flattering, if nothing else.

Hotch was suddenly struck by the semi-blasphemous thought that _he_ was her higher power, the one she would always compare herself to, the one she would try to impress by living well. That put the "superhero" comment she'd made before that first case after her return in a different light. Pip coloured slightly when Hotch caught her eye, all but confirming his conclusion; and he had to stop himself sighing. It was one thing for Jack to look up to him, eager and ready as a sponge to soak up everything his daddy wanted to teach. For a grown woman full of sarcasm and bullet holes to want the same thing suddenly felt very heavy, like another brick had been added to the weight across his back.

Once he thought about it a little more, Hotch realised her actions had already spoken, as loud and clear as her words. If not more so. The question that had been circling in the back of his mind – why it was her in his office instead of Dave, resolved itself.

She was as much of a private person as he was, she had come to him that evening fully intending to expose her soft underbelly just because she thought he needed to hear it for some reason - regardless of how uncomfortable it made her feel. In her odd way, it was Pip's apology for leaving him in the lurch with not so much as a by-your-leave, even though she'd not had a choice. And, most certainly, overtures of true friendship, beyond their existing professional one. Perhaps he needn't think of her admiration as a burden after all. She was capable, that much was obvious, just to survive as long as she had without becoming unstable or UnSub was remarkable. With her experience, she probably would have been his superior in another life, if the Chicago op hadn't ruined her chances of a field career.

A more equal partnership? He could certainly envision that. With Pip to keep Dave under control…and Morgan too, if Hotch was honest with himself, he could focus more on Reid, JJ and Emily. And Jack. And Strauss. The woes of the job of Unit Chief were many and varied and he could use all the help he could get. Friendship would come later, the more they got comfortable with each other. Hotch quashed the smirk. It wasn't her that needed time to get comfortable, it was him. Privacy was a way of life for him, secrecy was for her. Two sides of the same goal – she would have no trouble adapting, but Hotch knew it would be harder for him to share himself in that way.

Hotch inclined his head and raised his glass, toasting her with the remains of the shot she'd poured. He'd have to stop at two, especially as large as she measured them. He could already feel the buzz creeping up on him, the warmth he'd been seeking starting to trickle through. It would be hours before he could drive and if he had any more, he was liable to let slip more about himself than he was happy with.

Pip mirrored his action, acknowledging his acceptance gratefully. She took a deep mouthful, as if fortifying herself for the remains of the story.

"Worried about the future," she said after a moment's pause, "the very real risk she wouldn't make it back, and unsure where her reactivation would lead, she rejected her friend when he tried to tell her how he felt. As she was leaving, at her inadvertent prompting, admittedly, he told her that he loved her, was _in love_ with her and had been for a long time." She took another sip of her drink. "It was a bit of a surprise."

He could sense the overtones of why she was telling him it all. The similarities were striking, in places, with the situation he was in. Dave had started to tell him about it, many months ago, before they'd been interrupted by a case, before he'd gone to Afghanistan. There'd been no time then or since to finish that conversation.

"Holding him at arm's length hadn't worked," continued Pip, "she loved him too. By then, he was as essential to her as the very air she breathed. He'd wormed his way under her defences without her realising, taken up residence in her soul. But she never told him she felt the same. She left, leaving him behind with a broken heart and went reluctantly back to her old life. She saw some terrible things, and she did some terrible things too. Partly because she had to, but mostly out of disgust for herself for shying away from telling him the truth when she had the chance. Those actions still haunt her, still jerk her awake in the depths of the night with a scream caught behind her teeth." She cocked her head. "You know how that feels too, don't you?"

As if the question needed to be asked. If the horrors of some of their cases weren't enough, he had enough personal horror to feed his nightmares for decades to come.

"Yes," muttered Hotch. "I do." He hesitated, then ploughed on, regardless. It was about time he told _someone_ about the terrors in his sleep and if he was going to let her in, he may as well make a start. "I dream of the day Hayley died, and I dream of the rage and the blood, and of beating that bastard's head into the floor. When I stop, it's not Foyet dead in front of me anymore, it's _Hayley_. I wake up cold and sweating, wondering if I've disturbed Jack."

"You feel like it's your fault."

It wasn't a question, but Hotch answered anyway. "Yes."

"It isn't. Nor is it your fault nobody caught that twisted psycho sooner. You are not responsible for the actions of a madman, Hotch."

"What do you dream about?" he asked, unwilling to delve into any more of his mixed-up feelings about anything related to Foyet.

"I killed people," replied Pip softly. "Not because I was ordered to, not because my life was in danger. I killed a paedophile and a traitor, both in as grisly manner as I could manage, just because I thought they didn't deserve to walk the earth any longer. I dream of the look on their faces when they finally realised I was bringing their death. I dream of them begging for their lives, and I dream of their final looks of terror when that didn't work. I became judge, jury and executioner, and I didn't just want them to die, I wanted them to feel _pain_ , like the pain they'd brought to others."

She leaned back in her seat. "There's a fine line between justice and vengeance," Pip commented casually, as if they were discussing the weather, "and our respective actions fall on different sides of it. You the former, I the latter." She shrugged. "But then, I've always known that you were a better person than me."

Pip drained her tumbler once more and reached for the bottle. Hotch shook his head when she tilted it invitingly in his direction. She examined him, eyes flickering over his features. It was rather a disconcerting sensation, like she could see everything he was trying to hold back.

"I always knew I'd be getting a cab home, you're welcome to share it," she said, putting the bottle back down within his easy reach, having poured herself another large one – considerably bigger than the previous two. "I wasn't planning on being sober having talked about all this shit. Technically it's Dave's, but he won't mind." Pip smirked. "I bought it, after all."

Hotch considered that. He was feeling a little uncomfortable with how personal the evening was becoming and starting to think that maybe, getting a little intoxicated to counter that feeling wasn't such a bad idea. He'd already been more open than he'd planned, but just from what he'd learned so far, he understood Pip was a consummate secret-keeper. If he said something he regretted in the morning, nobody would ever know, and he knew better than to worry about her using it against him. She thought too highly of him for that.

Not to mention that drinking with her was proving far more interesting than an evening commiserating with Dave over past cases. No matter how they started, that's always what they talked about when deep in their cups.

"Why not?" he conceded finally and topped up his empty tumbler to a level matching hers. If he was doing it, might as well do it properly.

Pip smiled. "Why not, indeed. Which brings me to the last chapter in what has been up until now, rather a sad tale." She cocked her head. "Bear with me, we're almost there."

Hotch tilted his glass in a silent gesture to continue. He'd learnt more about her that evening than in all the years they'd worked together, and he had a feeling he was about to hear the part that she'd wanted to tell him from the beginning. The rest had just been build-up, background information so that it made sense.

"She tried to put her friend's declaration behind her when she returned a year later with a Company termination order hanging over her head," she said, "knowing he had been told she was already dead. Getting back to the US was no easy thing for a start and she'd been disavowed, marked for death because of something she knew. I mean, how does one start a relationship on that basis?" she added as an aside.

"What?" exclaimed Hotch incredulously. "What do you mean, "marked for death because of something you knew"?" He was vaguely aware the CIA would kill their own if circumstances demanded it. Somehow to have that policy not only confirmed, from the horse's mouth as it were, but that it had been applied to her, was deeply shocking. "What the _hell_ were you doing out there?"

Pip cocked her head. "We agreed to honesty, and you have to have realised I've already committed treason by being as open as I have. Any more details of the op will have to be ignored for the purposes of this conversation – it's still ongoing."

Hotch frowned. "Fine," he said unhappily. "You're safe from assassination now, I take it?" That the most important point, anyway.

"As can be," replied Pip cryptically. She shrugged. "It's complicated. The immediate threat has been lifted, certainly. A devious little garden gnome with friends in high places saw to that – along with my reinstatement here."

Hotch decided he wasn't going to ask for an explanation of that rather odd statement. "So, you thought there was no chance of…" He stopped, feeling once more the resonance of current events. Emily had used the word complicated too, when he'd tried to explain.

"Not a chance." Pip waved a dismissive hand to illustrate the absurdity of the idea. "Besides, the woman had _long_ given up hope of that, given the things she'd done. But he was persistent and tried again to tell her how he felt. She attempted to push him away, knowing she still might be killed just for making it back alive, and that her atrocities would be too much. That they would slowly poison any relationship between them. That because of them, she would lose him anyway."

Pip leaned forward in her seat, resting her arms on his desk. "He persevered. _Made_ her listen. Then he gave her space to think about it, without pressure or expectation of anything other than remaining her friend, no matter what."

She sat back a little, enough to give him a shrug. "Given a chance to mull it over, she quickly realised that any chance for happiness, even if it was to be short-lived, was worth it. That life is all too short not to grab every opportunity, and with _both_ hands. All the time she was away, he was all she could think about, even when the bullets were flying. Why not take the chance? Now, she's happy, and finally at peace with herself…more or less."

Pip fell silent, tale at an end. Hotch could see what she was trying to tell him, but she hadn't been party to the conversation that had led to him sulking alone his office. She didn't know just _how_ badly he'd handled it.

"I'm in a unique position," noted Pip quietly when he didn't speak. "Parts of my life mirror you, other parts, her. I can at least partly understand the different directions you're both travelling in. She's scared you won't understand the things she's done and doesn't want to lose the friendship you already have. You finally let your heart out of the lockbox you've kept it in, and when you didn't hear what you'd hoped, you lashed out like the wounded animal you really are. Then you closed yourself off entirely, like you did before."

Hotch shifted awkwardly in his seat. He'd drunk enough by then to be completely unable to hide his overwhelming discomfort of her all-too accurate assessment of what had happened. He could feel the blood draining from his face too, because Pip wasn't a profiler, but he worked with several very good ones. If she had picked up that level of detail, then what had everyone else seen?

Pip shook her head gently. "Relax," she reassured him. "I'm sure everyone else just thought you were uptight about revealing the deception surrounding her death, and that she was just nervous about their reactions. In a former life, I made a career out of helping or hindering relationships for political ends." She smirked. "You could say it's something of a speciality of mine. Far more effective than assassination, although I did my fair share of that, too. I'm good at seeing things others don't." Pip shrugged easily. "Just not for myself."

"Ye-es," Hotch said slowly, gladly latching onto the obvious topic that had presented itself, desperate to avoid discussing his own situation. He'd agreed to honesty, so all the time they were discussing her, it meant they weren't discussing _him_. It was only form of control he had over her this evening, having already given up both his position of authority and the option of deception hours previously.

"There's a large piece missing from the story of that woman, isn't there?" he asked, setting his tumbler down in order to lean forward and emphasise his point. The booze was definitely doing the talking, because he'd never have questioned her about it while sober. Not after the last time. "Her abusive boyfriend. You never mentioned him. Or the concern of her boss when he could see what was happening. The bruises she covered, the angry phone calls. None of that was anywhere in what you just told me."

Pip went still, like a hunted animal. If there had been one to hand, Hotch could have heard a pin drop in the silence that developed.

"That asshole hit you, I _know_ he did," he said softly into that silence when it dragged on too long to be comfortable any longer, becoming heavy and oppressive. "Many times."

"Twice," she whispered. "It was only twice."

"Is that what you've told Dave?" Hotch asked scornfully, starting to get irritated. "I thought we were being honest with each other this evening? You were with him for nearly _two years_. It wasn't twice, Pip, more like _twice a fucking month_ ," he insisted, the combination of alcohol and frustration with her making his temper bubble over a little. Their evening of truth-telling was likely to be his only opportunity to get it out in the open, something he'd wanted to do for a long time; and there she was, trying to renege on her own terms.

"I kept my mouth shut, against my better judgement, because you obviously had _no_ intention of cooperating if I'd tried to do something about him," he said, unable to make that sound anything other than scathing. "You made that _perfectly_ clear, the last time I brought it up. I will continue to keep my mouth shut, because you evidently haven't given Dave the whole picture either. I know that because McGill is still breathing. But this evening, just you and me, I want to hear you say it."

Pip shifted uneasily. "Plead the fifth," she mumbled into her tumbler as she necked the contents.

"That wasn't what we agreed," he growled. "If you think _anything_ of me at all, then honour me with the truth. Answer the damn question. He repeatedly abused you, didn't he?"

He'd boxed her into a corner, caught between her regard for him and her own rules for the evening, and they both knew it. Pip nodded, eyes averted.

"You forget that while Dave never met Damon McGill, I _did_ ," Hotch noted, drawing her gaze back to him with the force of his words. "I saw him instantly for what he was, and I saw what he was doing, yet you either brushed me off or blew up whenever I tried to mention it. Why? Why would you put up with it, and for so long? Why on _earth_ didn't you come to me for help? I would have done, you _know_ I would." He leaned back in his seat with a huff of frustration. "Look how it ended! Two dead Alexandria police officers and two more dead at the courthouse when he was finally convicted, one of them a _child_. Very nearly you and Dave too, a couple of weeks before that, we both know it was mostly luck that you survived instead of your assailants."

Pip flushed and turned her head away, refusing to meet his eyes. "Doesn't matter now," she muttered.

Hotch hissed, a long sigh of exasperation. He picked up his tumbler again, just to have something to look at other than her stricken expression. He hadn't meant to throw it at her quite so bluntly and she obviously felt the weight of responsibility for those deaths, regardless that it was McGill at fault.

Somehow, his glass was empty again, the third one going down much swifter than the previous two. Pip's was empty as well. He refilled both without asking, hoping she saw the overly generous size of the measure for the circumspect apology it really was. Pip grabbed hers from the desk and just stared at it. Hotch swirled his, watching the amber liquid rise and fall against the cut glass as he forced his temper back into the cage where it belonged. Honesty, yes, they'd agreed to that. Not ripping each other to shreds with it.

"I think it does matter," he disputed softly into the hush that had fallen over them. It was late enough by then that one could hear the building ticking gently as it cooled, lacking the heat of the bodies that occupied it during the day. "To me, it matters a great deal." Still contemplating his drink, he _felt_ her head shoot up to look at him more than seeing it.

Hotch took a deep breath, gaze still focused on the contents of the tumbler in his hand. "I know how it all turned out, and I hope you already know I don't hold you responsible for _anything_ that stemmed from that dreadful relationship. It was all him, it always was. What I want to know is why, if you think so highly of me, you didn't let me help you stop it in the beginning. Before everything got so completely and _utterly_ out of anyone's control."

He could feel the warning glare now, too. It was softened by the quantity of Dave's rather excellent scotch they'd ploughed through together, but still effective. It would have been even more effective if she hadn't started by trying to brush him off again, like she always had when he mentioned McGill.

"If you're in such an honest mood this evening," he looked up and finally caught her eye, "then answer me that _one_ thing."

Pip simply stared at him. Silence reigned once more. It was another test of who would break first, and Hotch was determined it wouldn't be him a second time. Trouble was, even though she two sheets to the wind, so was he. Outstaring her was like trying to outstare a cat. His nose started to itch and beads of sweat formed on his brow as the battle of wills stretched on.

Just as he was about to concede and give in to the maddening tickle in his left nostril, Pip finally faltered, her eyes dropping. She didn't look up as Hotch ran a shirt cuff over his forehead as subtly as he was able and furiously rubbed his nose.

"Because I didn't want you to think less of me," she mumbled.

The quiet admission wasn't addressed to him per se, more to his desk. The shame in her voice stole any satisfaction Hotch might have felt at winning their little stand-off.

"I wouldn't have thought any less of you!" he exclaimed incredulously. "I wanted to _help_ , that's all _._ I'd do the same for anyone in that situation. Why would you think that?" That she'd thought it, was not only surprising, but a little hurtful too. While they'd never been close friends in any sense, he thought she'd known him better than that. Would have trusted him more, even back then.

Pip shrugged one shoulder, a defeated gesture that spoke volumes about her discomfort with his line of questioning. "I was a marine sniper, and a highly-trained covert operative. More than capable of handling myself, even before I joined the FBI. I could have stopped it without help," she said quietly. "But I let him push me around for two years until he finally put me in the ER, because I felt like I needed punishing for past sins. I thought I was in control."

She'd _deliberately_ let McGill use her as his personal punching bag. Hotch was stunned and attempted to cover his discomfiture by topping up their drinks again. The twisted frown he received in thanks told him that Pip saw his reaction as confirming her previous assumptions.

"I don't think less of you, Pip," he said gently, trying to head off that line of thought immediately. "I'm confused, if anything. What sins? Surely anything you did was because you followed your orders, either as part of the military or one federal agency or another. If there's blame to be handed out, it wouldn't lie on your shoulders, but on those of your former superiors." He gave her a gentle smile. "I'm discounting myself of course, you've never done anything questionable for me that I didn't ask for."

He got the reaction he hoped for, a small smile making an appearance. "And a few you haven't," she said. "How did Jack like that action figure I got hold of for you?"

Hotch chuckled. "He loves it. I never did work out how you managed that, they were sold out before I even knew he wanted one." He fell silent, unable to work out what the expression on her face meant. "What sins, Pip?" he repeated, when she made no move to answer the question.

"For living, when Ian didn't," she admitted. "And for not realising I was pregnant and getting his baby killed, too."

Well, didn't _that_ explain a whole lot about her? And her relationship with that jackoff McGill. Profiling 101. Today's subject: Survivor Guilt. A little late in developing maybe, but still practically textbook.

"Is that why you've still got his engagement ring?" asked Hotch. "You haven't told Dave about _that_ , either." Hotch resisted glancing towards his desk drawer. "You carry it around with you."

Pip let out a huff of irritation. "Oh, I do hate profilers," she said with a bitter laugh. She pulled her keys out and unscrewed a small decorative wooden fob. "It's funny though. Whenever Dave asks me something, he'll tell me to start at the beginning, but his curiosity means he'll follow that up with a question that inevitably means I start the story in the middle. But in answer to your question, no, I haven't told him about this."

Hotch only had a brief glance at the diamond ring before it was whipped away and buried back in the same pocket from whence it came. He allowed himself a small smile. His briefcase was safe from being consumed in lieu of dinner, for that night anyway. The smile faded as he remembered the Gimmel ring on a chain Dave had found in Emily's apartment.

Pip offered him a twisted frown as if she knew where his thoughts had taken him. "I will eventually, but doing that means letting go of the dream that came with it. The happily married couple with a white picket fence, two point four children and a dog. I'd never thought about kids until I couldn't have any, but it's a bit late now, probably for all of it. Sometimes it's hard to let go, because it still hurts."

Hotch gently rubbed the indent on his ring finger with his thumb, running his nail across the skin where his wedding band used to sit. Pip caught the movement and offered him a half-smile, as if he'd just made her point for her.

"And sometimes," she said lowly, "sometimes, we _want_ it to hurt. That's the darkness we battle every day, to not sink into that, when it would be so easy to do so."

In other words, McGill had been a means to an end. Either unwilling or unable to cause herself physical pain, she'd hooked up with a complete jerk and let him do it for her. She'd continued to let him until one day, he went too far and put her in hospital. Either she'd finally had enough punishment, or that evening had been some sort of wake-up call and she had finally put an end to their train-wreck of a relationship. Or tried to, because things had only spiralled from there. Although it finally culminated with McGill locked up for his third strike and never to see the light of day again, it had all started because she'd needed to feel punished for something she couldn't have done a single thing to change.

"You're happy now, though?" Hotch asked. He would never have done so before, his relationship with Pip as the team leader of the AST had always been coolly professional, despite the way she had with words sometimes. Having spent an evening drinking Dave's scotch with her, the question suddenly seemed incredibly important. It would continue to be as well, he was determined to get to know this rather extraordinary woman a little better. Especially if Dave's plans…Hotch mentally clamped down on that, lest his face show his thoughts. He'd drunk far too much to be able to hide much of anything anymore, and the contents of his drawer was practically _shouting_ for his attention.

"Right now?" Pip nodded. "Yes. I had a moment of vengeance-fuelled madness during the summer and went rogue to deal with the leader of the gang that shot Ian, but I was lucky. An old friend in the Pentagon had a long-term interest in him and sanctioned my action to further his own operation. If it hadn't been for him pulling my toes out of the fire, I would have lost everything. That kind of brought it home to me a bit, woke me up, I suppose. I'm back behind my desk where I want to be, working for you, with a good team around me. Dave keeps the horrors of the past at bay, he makes me laugh, makes me feel safe."

"Are you going to run a risk like that again?" he asked. Apart from her personal wellbeing, if she went off the rails, it could have an operational impact too.

"No." Pip replied quickly. "For the first time in a long time, I've got something to lose, and I'm happy with that."

Pip leaned back in her seat. "In the future?" She shrugged. "The shadows may still win, or he'll get tired of me, but it's worth it while it lasts." She fixed his gaze with her own, pinning him to his seat. "It's worth another try, Hotch. Who knows where it might lead?"

Hotch felt his eyes being dragged towards his top drawer, despite best efforts to the contrary. No wonder Dave had said it felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket. It was burning a hole in his desk, and it wasn't even _his_. Hotch felt like he could see the damn thing _grinning_ at him, even through the layers of wood hiding it from view.

Oblivious to the contents of his drawer, Pip thankfully misinterpreted his sideways glance. "Just _be_ _there_. Let her know there's no pressure, let her see that there's no judgement of her actions. Show her that you are, and always will be, her friend. No matter what."

"You think…" Hotch stopped. Was he really going to do it? Have _that_ conversation, with Philippa Harker of all people? A woman perfectly capable of verbally tearing him a new one while still calling him "sir" with every other breath? Hotch suppressed the irreverent smirk. That had been a particularly memorable experience, and not one he cared to repeat.

But not that night. He had been granted a privileged glimpse of a whole different side to her, the Pip that was _under_ the prickles on the outside. It was the sympathy on her face that made the decision for him. She knew, as she said, from both sides of the equation. Or was it the alcohol doing the thinking? Hotch topped up their empty tumblers and almost missed the desk putting the nearly empty bottle down. Somewhere along the line, he'd lost count of how many they'd had, both of them just refilling at will as they talked. They'd be _pouring_ him into a cab at this rate. He owed Dave the best part of a very expensive bottle of scotch.

He cleared his throat and tried again. "You think if…if I told her again, properly this time, then give her some space, maybe…"

Pip gave him a small smile. "We're different people. Different lives, for all the similarities. But, yeah, maybe. What she did in the past plays on her mind. The reaction of your team to her return plays on her mind." She waved a hand. "You don't have to be a profiler to know _either_ of those things. Perhaps, once she's dealt with it all, she'll be more open to the idea." She took an untidy gulp of her drink, the first indication Hotch had seen that she was getting as inebriated as he was. Not quite what he'd planned for his evening, but it had been informative, if nothing else.

"Not to mention your timing is _fucking awful_ ," she added with a snort of genuine amusement. "She came back to protect the boy, who then watched his father die, as did she. Let her sort it out in her head, then deal with the other thing. Let her focus on that first, before you try and elbow your way in."

"I did sort of spring it on her," he admitted, starting to see something inherently funny in that.

Pip rolled her eyes. "Course you did. You've not seen her for months and even though you knew she was alive, you couldn't talk to her." Pip chuckled. "I bet you basically ambushed her, first chance you got, like an overeager Spaniel."

Hotch laughed along with her. "I guess I did," he agreed.

"What is it with you two? You and Dave, I mean," she added in response to his questioning look. "You wait months, years even, to tell a woman how you feel, and then you just sort of _throw it_ at us all in one go while we're distracted with something else." Pip snorted with laughter. "Both of you. Both of you picked the absolute _worst_ time, one way or another."

"You're all a bit scary," muttered Hotch, the scotch a little more in charge of his tongue than his brain was.

Pip just laughed, and Hotch joined in. "I can't imagine why," Pip said drily when they subsided, the lingering smirk telling Hotch that she knew _exactly_ why.

That had them laughing again, their whisky-fuelled evening suddenly making everything incredibly funny. Pip spilled some of her drink and shoulders shaking with laughter, Hotch poured the last bit in the bottle on his desk trying to top her up.

It took some time to sort themselves out, mopping up the whisky on his desk with an old t-shirt from Pip's bag and sniggering the whole time. Hotch reached back for the bottle he kept in the cabinet behind him and by unspoken agreement, they retired to the couch with it, rather than sitting across his desk from each other. Neither of them felt comfortable with the formality the desk implied any longer, preferring to sit casually as friends instead.

"Wasn't supposed to be like this," commented Pip absently, once she'd tucked herself up in the corner with her drink, legs crossed in a display of flexibility Hotch could never hope to replicate.

He'd lounged back with his feet up on the coffee table instead, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. "What do you mean?"

"I was supposed to be a ballerina."

That got him chuckling again and Pip reached over to whack him good-naturedly across the shoulder. "It's not that funny!" she exclaimed.

"Oh…oh yes, it is," spluttered Hotch through the laughter. "Now I've got this mental image of you in battle fatigues and a tutu, dancing Swan Lake wearing combat boots."

Pip dissolved into giggles. "That's quite a picture," she managed when she could draw breath long enough to speak. "Wasn't quite what _I_ had in mind."

"And what was that?"

"I was going to be on Broadway, have my name in lights," said Pip, making an arc in the air with her hands. "I did ballet until I was almost ten, but extra classes and stuff like that aren't exactly on the menu when you're a foster kid who moves family every few months." She shrugged. "I was good, I guess, and I enjoyed it but…well." She shrugged again, that time eloquently expressing the futility of her dream. "It's probably why I took so easily to knife fighting, there's a lot of the same flexibility and movement involved."

"How many foster homes where there?" Hotch asked curiously. "If you don't mind me asking."

Pip smiled gently. "I don't mind, but it's not like it matters now, I can't even remember all their names. In the four years I was fostered, I had twelve different placements before I ended up in a group home as one of those kids they'd given up trying to find a family for." She shuddered. "Dreadful place. I hated Highlands House, but I learned how to fight, and fight dirty, and to use my intelligence as well as my fists to get what I wanted."

"Never did play well with others, huh?" asked Hotch with a teasing smirk, keen to return to the lighter mood they'd been enjoying.

"You could say that," agreed Pip with a laugh. "There was a pair of fraternal twins who ruled the roost. Anything you wanted, it had to go through them. The adults had no idea there was another layer of management underneath them, and the Carson twins took full advantage of their lax attention. It wasn't until I framed Tilly for a theft that Dale had tried to pin on me that they finally left me alone. They realised then that I was too much trouble to make it worth their while. All I wanted was to be ignored, and after that little incident, they did."

"Doesn't seem to be the case here in the BAU," commented Hotch with a smile. Pip gave him an odd look and Hotch suddenly felt like he'd misstepped, spoken out of turn somehow. "Being ignored, I mean," he clarified, but that just turned the look into a frown. Hotch took a large swallow of his whisky, knowing for sure that he'd said the wrong thing, but unsure quite how what he'd said had caused that furrowed brow.

"Why change a habit of a lifetime?" muttered Pip into her tumbler, draining its contents.

Hotch poured them both another, aware that his bottle wasn't as smooth or well-aged as Dave's had been. They would have done better to drink them the other way around, but it was far too late to do anything about it now.

"What's wrong?" He ignored the faintly warning glare. "Just me here," he reassured her, wondering if he was about to hear something regarding the profiling team he wouldn't like. "If there's something amiss, I want to fix it."

Pip sighed. "Did you realise I was in and out of your office twice after you'd shut your door?" she asked. She flapped a hand at him. "Before I turned up with booze and a story to make your hair stand on end."

Hotch paused, thinking carefully. He'd been making a determined effort to bury himself in work before she'd disturbed him with Dave's bottle. "I know you took the Doyle file away and topped up the pile of consults in my in-tray," he said slowly. He hadn't seen her, the files moved on and off his desk as if by magic, just as they always had done since she'd been part of the BAU, so he only had his memory of what he'd been working on to judge her movements.

"Before that, I brought you the AIS reports for everyone who fired their weapon at the airfield," said Pip. "That's why I could take the Doyle file back. None of you notice us."

"I don't do it deliberately – honestly, I just…" Hotch stopped, a little lost for words. He'd never been told that someone under his supervision essentially felt ignored and a little under appreciated.

She waved an airy hand. "Don't get me wrong, for the most part it's to both our benefit, and it makes turnaround times quicker, but sometimes it feels like I'm invisible. It happens to all of my team, even Hank."

Hotch frowned. Duffy could practically cause a solar eclipse, it wasn't like he was easy to miss. "I'll try to change that, but I can't make any promises. I've got so used to you giving me everything I need before I need it, I don't know if I can break the habit. You're too good at your job, Pip."

The compliment softened the sense of unease that had begun to permeate the atmosphere, and Pip smiled softly. "So, I was going to be a ballerina...stop laughing! What were you going to be, mister? What did you want to be as a kid?"

Hotch cleared his throat, feeling the faint blush pinking his cheeks. "An astronaut."

"And you laughed at _me_? That's rich," sniggered Pip. "Captain Hotch, boldly going where no Hotchner has gone before…" She started giggling again. "Oh dear…that sounds like the tag-line to a bad porno."

"Charming," said Hotch sarcastically, laughing with her. "I was going to lead the first manned mission to Alpha Centuri if you must know."

Pip grinned at him. "So why did you join the FBI? You already know why I never became a ballerina, why didn't little Aaron grow up to join the Air Force and be an astronaut?"

"Well, I trained as a lawyer initially, although I'd ask you not to hold it against me," Hotch replied with a smirk. "I'm well aware of your feelings about lawyers."

Pip laughed. "I think all lawyers ought to be shot, but I've made exceptions for you, Hank and JP."

"Thank you," said Hotch drily. "Your forbearance is deeply appreciated," he added with a smirk as she sniggered into her tumbler. "By JP I assume you mean Sirro? He tried the case against McGill, didn't he?"

Pip nodded. "That's him, reckon he'll be President or something one day, that man is going places. Looks a bit like you at a casual glance. He's getting married soon, d'you remember Mark Holden? He ran the logistics desk for a little while, before Phillips joined us. They've finally set a date." Pip grinned. "Mark had the _biggest_ crush on you."

Hotch choked. "Really? I don't…" Memories of a tall blonde with admiring eyes surfaced. He'd assumed it was hero-worship, much as he'd seen on the face of young Rishi before she finally joined the Academy to become a field agent. "Oh, him." He stopped, with the disconcerting feeling that he was blushing again. It was kind of flattering, in a dreadfully awkward, definitely unreciprocated sort of way.

"Yes, _him_. Something about when you strapped on your gun," chuckled Pip, enjoying his reaction just a little too much, in Hotch's opinion. "Although I don't think that was really the weapon he was interested in…"

"Oh, stop, mercy! I surrender," he cried. He was more blushing by that point; his face was _burning_. Both of them dissolved into laughter once more.

"I even said it to Dave," commented Pip a few minutes later once they'd calmed down. "That one day, Mark would find an equally tall, dark, handsome man to settle down with, and that he'd become a superb field agent. JP certainly fits the first part, and all I ever hear is sunshine from Narcotics. He's made quite the impression there."

"Handsome?" Hotch asked uncertainly. She'd called him many things over the years, one way or another, but never that.

Pip gestured vaguely with her drink. "You don't have enough Italian blood for my taste," she said with a wink, "but I'm a woman with two eyes and you're a good-lookin' guy. I can't say I blame Mark for his little infatuation."

"I'm starting to regret this honesty business," said Hotch with a groan. "I'm learning far more here than I ever needed to."

Pip laughed at him, her eyes sparkling. "Am I embarrassin' you, Hotch?" she asked cheekily.

"Only a bit more than a _lot_ ," he retorted and they both laughed again. Hotch was starting to see what Dave saw in her. Despite the awful things they'd talked about, there they were, giggling like teenagers.

Pip refilled their drinks. "So, law school. You took the bar, practiced?" she asked, nudging them back on topic.

"Prosecution," agreed Hotch. "I wanted to lock up the bad guys, and I did. Lots of them."

"You wanted to _punish_ the bad guys," she corrected. "Probably one in particular. Tell me I'm wrong," she added bullishly when he frowned at her.

"No," he sighed into his drink. "You're not. But I'd rather that got left alone." Hotch could feel his pulse starting to race and a thin trickle of cold sweat making its way down his spine. They'd been honest all evening, brutally so in some places, and he _really_ didn't want that to become part of it. He raised his eyes to hers. "Please?" Begging had never been part of his character, but he would if it meant they weren't going to discuss his father.

"You never told anyone. I didn't either," said Pip softly. "It's ok, I understand." She nodded, agreeing to leave that subject be. "Go on."

Hotch closed his suddenly stinging eyes and let out a deep breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. That breath turned into two more heaving, shuddering lungfuls as he tried to shove everything that had just been dragged up like a dirty anchor, back down into the deep where it belonged. He jumped when he felt a gentle hand on his arm and turned his head to see warm hazel eyes not far from his own.

"It's ok, Hotch. Just breathe. Steady on, there." Pip tightened her grip. "Whatever happened, it's not here right now. You've risen above it. Now breathe, or I'll slap you."

That surprised a bark of laughter out of him and Hotch suddenly found he could breathe normally again. "Your bedside manner could do with some work," he muttered from behind his hand as he scrubbed his eyes. He hated tears, had always been told they were a sign of weakness, but for some reason in front of her, those ones held no shame.

"Foster-mom number nine: sympathy is just a word between shit and syphilis in the dictionary," commented Pip. "That was right after I told her that I couldn't live with someone who was incapable of completing the New York Times cryptic crossword. Her thoughts on sympathy turned out to be one of the few things we actually agreed on."

That had him chuckling again, the demons of the past banished once more by their conjoined laughter. There had been a lot of that over the course of the evening, one way or another, probably more than in the last several months put together. He was drunk as a lord, but it felt good.

"So, young Hotch was a _lawyer_ ," said Pip when they'd both got themselves under control again, somehow managing to put her own unique twist on the word "lawyer" so that it sounded more like "asshole". She took a sip of her rapidly emptying tumbler and refilled both glasses. His bottle was emptying faster than Dave's had, both of them drinking faster as they got more intoxicated. "A good one by the sound of it, if there can be such a thing. What changed?"

"The system has its flaws," replied Hotch. "I saw too many guilty men walk away on some technicality or other. I had an excellent prosecution record, but what no one sees is what goes on behind the scenes, the deal-making, the concessions you have to make. The state won't prosecute unless they're sure you can win." He shrugged. "It's a money thing, trials are expensive."

"Everything always boils down to one of two things," noted Pip. "Money or politics."

"Or both," noted Hotch, touching his glass with hers in agreement. They downed their drinks in salute. "Putting just some of them away wasn't enough, so I decided I wanted to catch them instead," he said simply, as he topped up their glasses once more.

"The fact that the girls," she smirked at him, " _and_ some of the guys, like a man with a badge and a gun wasn't part of it then?"

"Oh yes, that was definitely part of it," he agreed with a dead straight face. "I always wanted to be mooned over by young men just out of the Academy."

Pip threw her head back and laughed long and hard. "Guys and their guns," she snorted. "You're all the same. Anyone would think giving you a gun also gave you an instant penis enlargement."

"What about you?" Hotch retorted stridently. He quirked a teasing suggestive eyebrow. "There's always something about a woman in uniform, y'know."

"Yes, Hotch. I chose the Marines because the camo pants were the most flattering," she deadpanned. "Much better than the Army."

He laughed with her again, thoroughly enjoying himself. "Come on, really. Why join up? I have every admiration for anyone who does, believe me."

"I'm a language specialist, I figured I'd get a translation posting somewhere, hopefully far, far away from New York." Pip shrugged. "That was it really, I just wanted to get away and the military seemed like the easiest way to do it. What can I say? After the dorms in Highlands House, Marine barracks were reassuringly familiar and someone else cooked and did the laundry. They realised I could shoot during basic training, and it just kind of snowballed from there. Sniper school, here I come," she added bitterly, gesturing with her glass. "Pretty sure that's when The Company started watching, at the behest of a little short woman who's probably the most inferring busy-body the world has ever seen. It's her fault I joined the CIA in the first place, and she was the one who suggested the FBI when I left. I always suspected she'd spoken to Gideon after what happened in Chicago, too." Pip stabbed at the air several times with her index finger. "Fingers in lots of pies, that one."

"We've met, if you're talking about the person I think you are," said Hotch drily. "Sniper, huh? If big guns improve male prowess, then what do they do to women?" he asked with a smirk.

Pip drained the last of the bottle into their respective glasses. "Oops. Last orders ladies and gentlemen," she muttered, shaking the last few drops into his tumbler.

"From what I've seen," she said once she'd slouched casually next to him, close enough that their shoulders touched. "It causes them develop an attitude that puts off pretty much every available male on the planet. When you're in that overwatch position, do you know what those people relying on you call you?" Hotch shook his head. "They call you "god" because from where you are, you decide who lives and who dies." Pip smirked. "As a woman, I was called "goddess", designation Aphrodite for some poor punning on my name. Pip, apple, get it?"

She rolled her eyes when he grimaced. "I did say it was a poor pun. Goddesses are expected to be a breed apart, untouchable, and it's not like I didn't have the sharp tongue and attitude already. I didn't want to be there, doing what I was doing. The uniform did _nothing_ for my love life, believe me, even after winning a medal I'm still not convinced I deserved. That didn't change when I got my badge either," she added over the rim of her glass. "Ian and I originally met while I was in the Academy, but we lost touch and didn't meet again until years later. There was the odd hook-up in between, but nothing serious. Longest was a summer romance with an LAPD detective, and I took it far more seriously than he did. I'd given the badge up again by the time I met Damon. We'll ignore him."

"Be nice if he'd never existed at all," muttered Hotch.

"I can't disagree with you there," she agreed, and they touched glasses again. "Maybe that's why I never saw Dave as anythin' more than a friend. I assumed he'd never be interested and left it at that." She laughed a little, eyelids drooping as their long evening of alcohol consumption started to catch up with her. "Think he likes the attitude though, for some reason I'll never understand."

Hotch knew for a fact that Dave _loved_ it, and the bossiness that drove others crazy. "You certainly keep 'im on his toes," he commented, having to concentrate in order to form the words properly.

She laughed again. "'S good for him. What can I say?" Pip dropped him a cheeky wink. "I finally found an incent...incentive that makes him to get the paperwork done on time. His desk has never been so clear!"

Hotch let out a bray of laughter and they toasted each other sloppily with the remains of their drinks.

"Time atta bar," mumbled Pip, a little incoherently.

"Time," agreed Hotch.

They drained their glasses and began the somewhat difficult task of gathering their things to leave while completely plastered. Standing up gave Hotch an incredible headrush of alcohol, he hadn't been so wasted since his college graduation party. Pip was no better, stumbling into his desk trying to pick up her bag.

Together, they weaved their way out of the building, each leaning on the other in an effort to stay vertical. Given the height disparity, it felt like a very awkward three-legged race and there were several moments when they teetered on the edge of their balance.

"Thank you, Pip," mumbled Hotch, as they sat slumped in the back of a cab together. "This evenin'…I know you tore open some wounds jus' to tell me somethin' I should have known already."

"'S worth it if it helped," she replied, eyes warm.

He squinted at her blearily. "You'd jump in fron' ofa bus for me, wouldn' you?"

"Yep," said Pip happily. She wagged a finger in his direction. "Haveta stop n ask which number first. I'd wanna do it right." She sniggered, and that got him going too.

"Still 'spect you normal time ina mornin'." He tried for stern, but slurring as he was, he was missing all his usual weight of authority. "Punishment f'r gettin' the boss drunk."

"'S'already mornin'," she disputed, a little smugly. "An' 'm pretty sure we're all gonna get sus-suspended anyway."

"Mmm," agreed Hotch. That was tomorrow's problem. Today's problem. Whatever. "Normal time later, then," he managed.

"Yessir," slurred Pip. "'S my honour."


End file.
